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Photo by Jeff
Watts
Learning
remains a top priority
Life’s
too precious for Laura Murray to sit still. Although the School
of Public Affair’s assistant dean for budget and administration
has been at AU for three decades, she’s constantly moving.
Education, whether it’s in or out of the classroom, was top
priority in Murray’s family as she grew up. And when a challenge
arises for this university woman, it’s just a route to more
knowledge.
When the budget specialist’s vision began failing in one eye
in the mid 1990s, Murray switched her lifetime hobby from cross-stitching
to photography. Her only prior photography experience was snapping
mug shots and awards ceremonies for the Eagle during her undergraduate
days at AU (“Back when everything was manual!” she says
with a hearty laugh), but she enjoyed it enough then to give it
another try. The transition has been a big success. She loves to
zoom-in on texture and to shoot the “Awakening” statue
at sunset at Haines Point, but her favorite snapshot theme is children.
“They’re just so natural,” Murray says. “People
stiffen up with age.”
Beyond her knack for photography, Murray, of course, has a flair
for numbers. But crunching numbers, though she loves it, is not
what she set out to do. When Murray arrived as an AU student in
the fall of 1973, she planned on becoming a lawyer and graduated
with a degree in political science. During her studies, she began
working part time in student accounts as a clerk and, “at some
point, decided not to be a lawyer.” Using the analytical skills
she acquired in political science classes, Murray worked her way
up to a manager, then went off to work at WAMU-FM as the director
of general services. After working 12 years at the radio station,
Murray decided to return to the busy swirl of academia, and moved
on to Washington College of Law to administer its finances. Two
years later, she moved again, this time to the School of Public
Affairs.
“As time goes on, I discovered even though I didn’t go
into political science the way I planned, I use the skills from
my degree every day,” she says. In fact, the Lewisdale, Md.,
resident likes to relate that idea to prospective students and freshmen.
After all, learning, as her family always taught her, doesn’t
stop at a degree. Learning is lifelong. —Jessica Leshnoff
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