Berkeleyan
Obituary
Jana Woodard
19 July 2006
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 Jana Woodard |
Born in Oakland in 1953, Woodard attended San Jose State and worked for the city of Oakland before coming to the Berkeley campus in 1986. Her first job was administering teaching-improvement grant programs in the Office of Educational Development (OED). As OED expanded and changed, Woodard took on more and more financial and budgetary responsibilities. For the past five years she oversaw the budgets for 11 units and 130 staff as finance manager for the Division of Undergraduate Education within what is now the Office of the Assistant Vice Provost, Undergraduate Education.
Woodard was known for her impeccable accounting and budgeting practices ("You could eat off her ledgers," says her supervisor) as well as her kindness, humility, and determination to make everyone else's lives easier.
Beyond the care and feeding of her immediate office, she nurtured, shepherded, and watched over all of the units and programs in the Division of Undergraduate Education to assure that they had maximum use of their limited resources. She was creative, inventive, and not above flexing the rules when allowed to provide the best support possible to the division. "She could have been secretary of the Treasury - and we'd probably be better off if she had been," says a colleague.
Woodard, who received a Distinguished Service Award from the campus in 1997, is survived by her husband, Tom; son Omega Beard; daughters Amber Woodard and Krista Woodard; parents Eugene and Leatrice McClendon; brothers Francis Barry McClendon and Stephen McClendon, as well as numerous other relatives.
A campus memorial service was held on June 26. Donations in Woodard's memory may be made online to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, at www.komen.org, or mailed to P.O. Box 650309, Dallas, TX 75265-0309.