Is the title "secretary" unprofessional?

[AJ_Katz]

Is it considered unprofessional to refer to an administrative assistant as a secretary? 

I just saw a position description to recruit an "office associate" and in the job description, they refer to the person's role as "serving as the undergraduate secretary for the department".  I thought that term was no longer politically correct. 

[aside]

Is it considered unprofessional to refer to an administrative assistant as a secretary? 

It is at my place.  The only folks having the title "secretary" are those holding that office in student government, faculty senate, etc.

[Ruralguy]

It certainly appears on building blueprints as "sec office" but that just means architects are a conservative lot.

[lightning]

It has been a very long time since I last heard the word "secretary" uttered in the academic workplace.

[fourhats]

I still hear it used around my university, sometimes even by those in that position.

[FishProf]

The title at my Uni is "Clerk" but I rarely hear it used.  "Admin" sometimes is used , but secretary is the most common term I hear.

I hadn't realized that was odd until this thread.

[fishbrains]

At my CC, using "secretary" would be like calling the faculty "teachers," as in "The teachers at our college care about students." It wouldn't really be totally incorrect or necessarily an insult, but it would sound odd and imprecise--like the person wasn't using the general language of the College for some reason.

[miss jane marple]

Oh, goodness, using the S word* around my work gets immediately corrected to administrative assistant or executive assistant, whichever applies. This is in a blood red hot flyover state, too, y'all.

*with the aforementioned exception for elected secretaries of committees or organizations

[spork]

I find this example of title bloat to be especially sad. My mom had a long career as a secretary for two major federal agencies and in the Capitol Hill offices of U.S. Senators. She could have become a Rosemary Woods had she not decided to have children.

[Aster]

There is the same titular bloat with our technicians.

Big Urban College has decided that it is far more grand to call them as "laboratory specialists".

Everyone calls them techs of course. No one is going to waste time uttering eight syllables instead of one.

Same thing with secretaries, although the admin-wonks try their darndest to promote their mouth salads.


I am looking forward to the day where title rebranding actually results in a more compact title, and not superfluous words and/or syllables.

[lightning]

There is the same titular bloat with our technicians.

Big Urban College has decided that it is far more grand to call them as "laboratory specialists".

Everyone calls them techs of course. No one is going to waste time uttering eight syllables instead of one.

Same thing with secretaries, although the admin-wonks try their darndest to promote their mouth salads.


I am looking forward to the day where title rebranding actually results in a more compact title, and not superfluous words and/or syllables.

Well, not always. Some colleges have been replacing "Director" with "Dean" even if the position is not associated with faculty and curriculum. For example, instead of Director of Business Services or Director of Student Housing, I'll see Dean of Business Services or Dean of Student Housing. That's less verbiage, but is completely confusing and even misleading. That's the kind of rebranding I do not want, even if it is less syllables.

[mamselle]

Ummm...'scuse me.

It's not title bloat.

Having worked as a staff assistant/executive assistant quite a bit at various points, the terms convey very different things.

The "secretary" is the one who puts the kettle on, brings you your tea/coffee, calls the dry cleaners for you and types up a few letters. He/she can't cope with much more than that and they're mostly around because they're a relative of someone who needs somewhere to put them. They often lean heavily on the staff assistants/exec. assistants for much of their work as well.

The "Staff Assistant" may do some or all of those things by choice or out of kindness, but their primary tasks focus around serious calendaring, expense reporting, grant management, community meeting organization, coordination of catering and hosting functions for visiting guests, administrative higher-ups, IT/A-V setup and coordination, booking lodging and travel for all those on the floor who don't can't do their own (varies), following up multiple times with the guy at OSR who will NOT get his higher-up to sign off on something you HEARD him say he would agree to on the phone while in his office for the 16th time in two weeks (at your director's behest), and all other things not enumerated above. Editing, formatting documents in Word, Excel, Access, and any pdf-able materials may also be included--as well as creating bibliographies for a publication submission, and doing the online submission itself in many cases.

Oh, and helping the secretary with whatever s/he can't do on the computer--usually most of it.

And Puh-leeese! do not send me a bouquet of flowers for "National Secretaries' Day."

I'd prefer a pay raise, frankly.

M.

[AJ_Katz]

It seems like there are a variety of opinions on this topic, so it helps me to understand why this term might still be in everyday use around here.

Nevertheless, it concerns me that I saw the word "secretary" used in the job advertisement for an office associate.  My sense of the word secretary is that there is a strong gendered component to it, so I am surprised that the HR screening of the job advertisement allowed it to go through like that.

[Ruralguy]

At my school "secretary" is actually the better (higher paid) position, as in "Executive  Secretary to the Dean."  At the  dept. or division level they are officially Administrative Assistants but I think almost everybody calls them  secretaries.

I am pretty sure that almost none of them get anybody coffee or pick up dry cleaning or run interference with someone's spouse.

[clearly_burn21]

Another data point from the Midwest.  We absolutely have distinct positions for administrative assistants and secretaries.

Secretaries are classified as clerical staff -they do photocopies, walk guests across campus, if need be shuttle us across campus in vans, orders lunch for meetings, typing (if ppl actually wrote stuff out by hand) etc. Essentially all the stuff we're too lazy to do

Administrative staff are authorized representatives in the University hierarchy. As described above, this includes grant management, course scheduling and building assignments, etc in addition to simpler things like calendaring. The secretaries support them in many of these simpler functions. Many of these faculty could do themselves but, here at least, requires administrative staff to rubber stamp before it advances.

For all the stigma with the term secretary, gender was not one that I've heard (although many are female)