By Sophie Walsh, McMaster News
People of McMaster celebrates the incredible people who help make McMaster a great place to work, learn, teach and conduct research.
It’s another early morning in the Mills Memorial Library and among the quiet buzz of students, staff and faculty settling in for the day is Tracie Large, custodian and 2024 President’s Award recipient –– already hard at work.
With an average of 10,000 people coming and going every day, you might think it would be impossible to create such a warm, tight-knit community in such a busy spot –– but for Large, who has been showing her commitment to the McMaster community for more than a decade, making people feel welcome is second nature.
“I really like to get to know people,” she says. She has a knack for teaching and loves to connect with others by sharing trade tips, recognizing everyone’s individual talents and making her team stronger.
Whether it’s arriving early to clean offices before people come in, remembering birthdays and organizing little celebrations for her colleagues, taking new employees under her wing or leaving personalized notes and gifts on desks, Large is always finding little ways to brighten someone’s day and make everyone feel seen.
Tell me about your journey to working at McMaster.
When I started at Mac, I had three jobs at the time. Soon after I started here, I needed to go on caregiver leave. When that happened, McMaster was very respectful of the time I needed to take off and in the end Mac was the only job I returned to. I really appreciated how I was supported and I wanted to show my loyalty.
What are some of the highlights of working in the Mills Memorial Library?
The people are very nice. It’s a special sort of caring environment, so I like to share that joy back. Every once in a while, I like to go out and buy a whole bunch of chips or something and then deliver them to all the people who work in the library. Everyone seems to like it, so I really like doing that.
What’s your relationship like with the community?
Being on the first floor, I get to see a variety of people all coming and going, so it’s a nice spot that way, as opposed to if I was only working on one of the floors above and only seeing a smaller group of people. People are nice and stop to chat so it’s a very warm environment.
I also clean the archives in the basement, and that’s how I found out there was going to be this exhibit in the museum. The people working on it encouraged me to come to that, so I did. It’s pretty special to get to see these things going on and you learn all sorts of interesting things about people.
I found out there’s one guy on the fourth floor who collects vinyl albums. Then when I was cleaning out my basement at home, I realized I had a whole bunch, so I gave them to him and he was so happy. I really like to get to know people that way –– find out what they like, what they’re doing and do little things like that to build on the relationships I have with them.
How has McMaster influenced your growth?
A couple years back, I think it was in 2018, I took a leadership course at Mac. It sounded interesting and they were offering it for free, so I signed up. I think it really helped me expand my knowledge of the university and understand how different parts of it work. We learned a lot about all the different sorts of roles across campus and what other people are doing. There were people from the medical fields, people from accounting –– a whole array of people.
We also did job shadowing, which I found really educational in seeing how other people do their jobs, and it’s interesting to get to try new things and have a quick change in your routine. After that, I think I grew a better understanding of how all of these different roles and departments are connected in some way and how they all interact together to keep things running.
What’s next for you?
I also like helping my coworkers. In the past, I was really interested in teaching, so whenever they need someone to help train the new employees, I always like to do that and I would like to do more of that in the future.
Everyone knows all sorts of different ways of doing things, so I’m interested in finding more ways to learn and teach other people to make everyone’s job easier and help us become stronger as a department. Besides that, I’m looking forward to retirement –– when it comes.
