Waynesburg University

Six months ago, Isaiah Skeete was walking across the stage to grab his diploma.

Skeete, a criminal justice graduate, was looking to land a career in his field of choice and found one in probations. In addition to his intended pursuits, Skeete also stumbled across a graduate assistant position with Waynesburg’s student activities.

Fast forward to now, Skeete recently made the jump from working as a Graduate assistant, part-time Admissions Counselor and Probations worker, to a full-time Admissions Counselor a few weeks ago.

QUESTION: You just made the transition from being a GA in student activities to being an admissions counselor, what factored into that decision for you?

A: “I think the biggest thing for me was my heart and my passion. My heart and my passion is here with the university. When I was a student, I worked in admissions as a student ambassador for three years so I learned a lot of the processes and how the whole admissions process works. And I fell in love with giving students tours and stuff. 

When the opportunity came to me, I was so happy. I could not stop smiling when I got the call from Doctor Payne. I’m very excited that I made the move, and now it’s just the whole training process.”

Q: How easy is that transition process for you by having that experience in working in admissions and now be fully working in it?

A: “I don’t think it’s going to be a big transition. I’m familiar with a lot of the stuff. I know a lot about Waynesburg, the programs and the services that we offer to students. 

Kinda the biggest thing I’m being trained on is just the computer stuff like all of the application stuff that I am unfamiliar with. Besides that, I know most of the stuff at Waynesburg; so I don’t have to worry about a lot of that stuff.”

Q: Makes it seem like you’d have to be a computer science major to understand everything. But in your time here at Waynesburg, you were a criminal justice major at the university, was it really in your plans to work here after graduating or were you more looking into something in your field?

A: At first, no [to working at Waynesburg]. I was not planning on working, especially in admissions. After I graduated, I got offered the graduate assistant job; so that was my part time job and allowed me some time to work [other places]. I worked at Adult Probation in Washington to get some experience in the criminal justice field, and then again part of my heart and my passion is here. 

The probation job, I’ve learned a lot. I’ve gained a lot of really good experiences, but it didn’t really get me up in the morning. When I came up here to work as a GA to run these events and plan for those, that’s what got me up in the morning to energize me to say the least.” 

Q: How would you describe the unforeseen path you’ve taken?

A: “My Dad has always told me that no path is linear. I was expecting to graduate college, go right into law enforcement, probation and A, B, C, D. But obviously that’s not the case for a lot of people. You go from A to Z to C, it goes all over the place. My thing is that I want to do what gets me up in the morning and energizes me. This opportunity definitely does.”