After 29 and a half years at U-M, Mariann Christy is retiring. She has made great strides as part of the Clinical Research Management team at MICHR, and will be missed by all of us. Learn more about Mariann’s story in the interview below.
Can you tell us a little about how you started your professional life?
My career started as a government summer student intern during college studying operations research in the College of Business Administration at BGSU. I interned two summers at the NASA Center in Cleveland and one summer at the EPA. After earning my Master’s degree from the Industrial and Operations Engineering Department here at U-M, I worked for Ford in the Transmission Division doing simulations of assembly plants. I also worked for a small company working on government defense contracts doing systems analysis in State College PA. Work took my husband, young daughter, and me to Texas and Alaska before moving back to Ann Arbor. When we returned to Ann Arbor, I worked for a software company and a consulting firm doing simulations similar to the type I had done at Ford.
What did you like most about your early career experience?
Realizing that I could use the area I had enjoyed studying in school to build an interesting career. And, that it was flexible enough to be used in many interesting applications. The variety of my early experiences helped me to realize that I preferred a research environment to the corporate world. So it’s not really a big surprise that I ended up spending most of my career at an academic medical center.
How is it that you came to work at the university and find your way to MICHR?
My opportunity to work at U-M happened in 1992 when Dr. Morton Brown in the Biostatistics Department at the School of Public Health took a chance on me. He thought the database and SAS programming skills I had developed in earlier jobs doing systems and data analysis could be used in clinical trials. I worked for Dr. Brown for 15 years until he retired in 2007. A lot of our projects were with the GCRC (General Clinical Research Center), a precursor to MICHR.
While working in the Biostatistics Department I learned web programming, and other new skills that would become useful in my future work at MICHR. I also met some people who I would later work with at MICHR, including Kevin Weatherwax and Dr. Ana Lok.
What are some of the most meaningful or enjoyable projects you’ve worked on since joining the university?
In 2011, I worked with Dr. Deb Gipson and Moira Dowling to implement research functionality for the initial release of MiChart. It was intense but exciting to be part of this major initiative. I was glad to be able to do what I love most and what keeps me going, which is learning new things. Having the opportunity to attend classes at Epic headquarters in Wisconsin and earn Epic Ambulatory certification and Research certification was hard but also very fun. This major project expanded my contacts to many different areas of Michigan Medicine including the IRB, Regulatory Affairs, CRAO, HITS, Compliance, Revenue Cycle, and Research Billing along with many MiChart teams. During this time I worked closely with MICHR staff and officially joined MICHR in 2013.
During my time at MICHR, I was given the opportunity to be part of the team responsible for selecting and implementing a new Clinical Trial Management System. Because of my previous work with MiChart, my focus was on configuring and testing the interfaces between Oncore and MiChart. This was another chance for me to use a broad range of skills, and to again learn new things. Since OnCore went live in 2017, I have continued to work with the OnCore team and enjoy being able to make connections between members of the OnCore team and MICHR.
Do you have any fond memories of MICHR that you’d like to share?
My fondest memories of MICHR are the many social events planned by MUG – Halloween and Christmas parties, volunteering with other MICHR staff at Food Gatherers during the holidays, ice cream socials in the courtyard, and the summer picnics. All of these events and many more were lots of fun because of all the nice people who are part of MICHR.
What are your plans for the future?
It’s been a great run, but I am ready for my retirement to start on February 9. I have always planned to learn how to play the harp, so very soon I will work on finding a teacher. I also want to volunteer at Food Gatherers and exercise more. Of course, more cooking, gardening, sewing, reading, and traveling will be happening too. What I really want to do is slow down.