A quarter century of service at Penn State Beaver

MONACA, Pa. — Managing the bills for Penn State Beaver’s 700-plus students is not an easy task.Students forget deadlines. Parents have questions. Sometimes people yell. Other times, they cry. A few times, Diane Hunt has, too.She can’t help herself. When students have trouble paying their bills or are in danger of missing a deadline, she gets invested. She immediately does whatever she can to help, whether working with her colleagues in financial aid or making calls to University Park.“I get emotional,” she admitted. “But most of the time, it works out.”Hunt is celebrating her 25th year at Penn State Beaver. She began working at the bookstore in January of 1991 and, one year later, moved to her current position as an administrative support assistant in finance and business services, where her central responsibility is student billing.It was a move she wasn’t certain she wanted to make. She heard the supervisor at the time was gruff.“I don’t want to work for him,” she told her family.But the yearning for added responsibility and challenge won out and she went to work for Dick Sosnowski, who ended up becoming something like a father to Hunt. (Sosnowski is now retired.)Working at Beaver soon became an actual family affair. Hunt’s husband, Dave, is the campus maintenance supervisor, and her son Josh works for Housing and Food Services.Oh, and they live next door to campus, though Hunt, a self-described country girl, plans to move out of town as soon as she retires.When that retirement will be is anyone’s guess.“I have students come by and ask, ‘Are you still here?’” Hunt said, laughing. “Yes, I am.”