As Academic Department Manager, Lisa Noble helps students to navigate program requirements and connect them with resources on campus, among many other duties. She is currently working to streamline travel funding requests and expense reporting, coordinating with SEAS to provide accommodations to students and gathering student suggestions for improvements to the program, all in between building the department’s presence on Twitter through creating and posting student research videos.

“I get the most satisfaction being on the frontline helping students navigate through any challenges they may be having, whether it is leave related, funding or anything else. Being a graduate student is a stressful experience and when I’m able to advocate for them to resolve an issue, it is particularly satisfying,” she says.

Noble has come to the Graduate School with a number of new ideas of how to help support graduate students, several of which have been implemented to date. She enjoys hearing about student research and fieldwork and was surprised to see the number of external awards that Anthropology students receive to help fund their research. She notes, “It was eye-opening and exciting to see all the places in the world that our students travel to in order to conduct their research. Our students are all over the globe!”

In her time at Brown (this is Noble’s third position), she notes that the biggest change has been the focus on diversity and inclusion in the University. She has enjoyed participating in the DIAP work and feels fortunate to have attended the various trainings offered. 

In Providence, she appreciates the arts and music scene and takes advantage of the multitude of cultural and intellectual opportunities on campus. In between it all, she’s taking courses to earn her MBA at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.