Susan Adair still remembers the lesson from a service training she attended years before coming to UNLV: Help the person in front of you.
“If I can help, I will,” Adair said. “Even if it’s not necessarily my job, if I have the information or know the answer, I’d rather help than send someone somewhere else.”
Her nominators put it more plainly: Adair refuses to “pass the buck.”
That approach helped earn Adair, an administrative assistant III in Lee Business School’s Department of Economics, second place for the 2026 President’s Classified Employee of the Year awards.
Since joining UNLV in 2020, Adair has become a go-to person when a problem in her department needs patience, follow-through, and attention to detail. One nominator wrote that she has “fundamentally transformed how the Department of Economics operates.”
A Chemist in the Economics Department
The idea came from a service training she completed in a previous role. “Students and families should not feel like they are being sent from office to office without an answer,” she said.
Adair’s work often begins with everyday questions that still need careful handling, from helping a student on a waitlist to supporting faculty hiring, vendor processing, or forms that need to reach the right office. She also helped digitize human resources and accounts payable files and documented processes so the department does not have to start from scratch each time.
Before she was solving problems in the Department of Economics, Adair was solving a different kind of problem. She studied chemistry at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley and worked as a chemist for more than a decade.
The work trained her to pay attention to small details, follow a process, and understand how one missed step can affect everything that follows.
At UNLV, that can mean noticing when enrollment data does not look right or helping a faculty member navigate a complicated outside data purchase. According to the nomination, one process that could have taken months was completed in less than two working weeks because Adair took the lead.
When students or colleagues come to her stressed, Adair said her approach begins “with kindness.”
Often, people need someone to listen before the problem becomes clear.
The Values She Carries
Adair credits much of her work ethic to her family.
She grew up the youngest of seven siblings in Victor, Colorado. Her parents, Betty and Harry, were kind, humble, and hardworking, she said, and they instilled in their children integrity and the importance of doing things the right way.
She brought that same sense of responsibility into the family she built with her husband, Mark. Together, they had four children: Amy and triplets Mark lovingly called “the Three Musketeers.” One of the triplets, their daughter, passed away shortly after birth.
After Mark passed away following an 8-year battle with a brain tumor, Adair raised their children as a single mother. She speaks about Mark with warmth, and says that chapter of her family’s life eventually helped shape her path into higher education. When she returned to work, she looked for roles in education because the schedule allowed her to be present for her children.
When Adair talks about work, she does not start with systems or forms. She starts with the person in front of her, whether that is a student trying to get into a class, a faculty member stuck in an unfamiliar process, or a colleague figuring out what to do next.
Adair listens first, then she helps.
She is quick to credit her colleagues in Economics for shaping the way she works. If colleagues see excellence in her, she said, it is because she is surrounded by people who bring that same level of care to the department.
Outside of work, Adair said what brings her joy is simple: faith, family, and friends. When asked where she would go if she could get on a plane tomorrow, her answer was just as simple: wherever her children are. Amy lives in Oahu, Hawaii; Michael in Bloomington, Indiana; and Matthew in Waterloo, Iowa.
When reflecting on her career at UNLV, Adair says the work still comes back to the lesson she has carried with her for years: help the person in front of you.
