Barbara Baker, director of marketing services at Northeastern Junior College, has been named the Administrative Professional/Technical Employee of the Year for 2010. She was selected for the award by the people she works with at NJC and will be honored during a state-wide luncheon in Denver on March 2nd. Each college in the Colorado Community College System selected a recipient for this award on their respective campuses.
Baker, who has been at Northeastern Junior College since 1997, began her employment in higher education in the college’s admissions office, originally traveling to the Denver area three days a week to visit high schools and recruit students from the metro area. She worked in admissions for four years, being named the director of the office in 1999. In 2001, during a restructuring of personnel on campus, she was named director of marketing services. Baker is responsible for most all of the public information and marketing related activities at the college including promotion for student recruitment and enrollment as well as college events, programs and activities.
Baker’s career as a professional communicator now spans 29 years and has included both creative and technical communication management in newspaper, radio, magazine, advertising agency, public relations, chambers of commerce and higher education. She is also an adjunct faculty member for the college and teaches classes related to mass communications and business. Before her employment with NJC, she was self-employed for nine years in the Fort Collins area and co-taught several marketing-related community education classes and occasionally was a guest presenter in the journalism classes at Colorado State University (CSU). She is a published author. Some of her writing has appeared in national publications.
A native of southeastern Colorado, Baker holds an associate’s degree from NJC and a bachelor’s degree in technical journalism from CSU. She has been active on a number of committees and advisory groups at the college and in the community over the years, She is currently on the Logan County Economic Development Corporation’s marketing committee, assists with the Sterling Regional Med Center’s physician recruitment activities, and is a member of the Sterling High School Agriculture Advisory Committee.
The Colorado Community College System asks each college to name a Faculty Member of The Year, a Classified Employee of the Year and new this year, an Administrative Professional/Technical Employee of the Year. Pam Berns has been named NJC’s Faculty of the Year and Elaine Jones was chosen Classified Employee of the Year.
