By Jack Peng Website Manager
Mills Campus Safety Specialist Michael Duer prioritizes security for students, faculty, and staff and promotes positive student behaviors. Duer ensures that students are attending their classes, watches for people entering and exiting the campus, and focuses on creating a safe environment where students are able to feel secure and concentrate on learning.
Unlike faculty and staff, Duer does not have a consistent schedule to follow daily. He is only responsible for completing a few scheduled tasks, including directing traffic in the student parking lot in the mornings, as well as monitoring the outskirts of campus during break hours throughout the school day. He performs patrols of the campus buildings and grounds in order to maintain order and safety and provides a preventative presence to attempt to prevent any suspicious activity.
Duer is also alert and quick to respond to the requests of students, faculty, and staff. He finds his job very satisfactory because he is given the freedom to improvise and help situations. Duer will often receive unexpected calls for help from students and is expected to make the best judgement on what he should do. He feels that some of the most rewarding moments while working as Mills’ Campus Safety Specialist are instances where he is able to support students through difficult situations such as family, academic, or social issues.
Duer believes that he is able to form a strong relationship with the Mills students as he also struggled as a teenager in school and is empathetic to their circumstances. He appreciates that his job allows him to support and work with students. Having grown up in Europe, he found the American school system to be vastly different from European school systems. “In Europe, not all students have the same freedom to pursue the careers and the futures they would like to have,” says Duer. “As a European student, you already know what college you will attend by age ten.”
Unlike most students at the time, Duer chose not to follow a traditional path and pursued a unique career as a pilot; however, he decided to stop because it was dangerous and time-consuming. “My wife told me I needed to hang up my pilot wings and stay closer to home, so after jet setting around the globe, my family clipped my wings and I landed in the Mills courtyard,” explains Duer. “I am so happy to be part of the Viking family…it was my destiny.” The Thunderbolt would like to thank Michael Duer for ensuring safety on campus and promoting positive behavior in order to create a secure and comfortable learning environment for the Mills students.
