December 7, 2022 | Erin Bluvas, bluvase@sc.edu
“I describe my accepting of the job offer with the Arnold School as one of the best decisions that I have ever made in my life,” April Osteen says. “The amount of knowledge that I have been able to learn from this role is invaluable.”
That offer came in 2017, and Osteen has served as the business operations coordinator for the SmartState Center, Center for Effectiveness Research in Orthopaedics (CERortho) and the Arnold School of Public Health Greenville for five years and counting. It’s the perfect fit for the lifelong Greenville County resident whose office is located at the Prisma Health Upstate Downtown Greenville Building alongside other Arnold School faculty and staff who work out of Greenville and partner closely with Prisma Health.
So much work goes in to submitting grants, especially National Institutes of Health grants, so when we do finally receive notice that all of the hard work has paid off, and one of our grant proposals has been accepted for funding, pride and excitement rushes through my veins.
-April Osteen, business operations coordinator for CERortho and Arnold School of Public Health Greenville
“We were very fortunate to find April during our search in 2017,” say John Brooks, Director of CERortho and professor of health services policy and management. “April thrives on organizing chaos, and chaos is often the situation when we are trying to submit new research proposals or initiate new research agendas. Her administrative diligence has freed up CERortho investigators to focus on the science, and we are so appreciative of this!”
Osteen’s day-to-day work focuses on accounting operations for CEROrtho, including the oversight of endowment and grant accounts, and serving as a resource and administrative coordinator for the Arnold School’s Greenville presence. Her favorite part is her role in the pre- and post-award grant submission process.
“So much work goes in to submitting grants, especially National Institutes of Health grants, so when we do finally receive notice that all of the hard work has paid off, and one of our grant proposals has been accepted for funding, pride and excitement rushes through my veins,” Osteen says. “I sometimes explain this feeling to others using the analogy of the feeling one gets when a football team scores the winning touchdown in triple overtime. For those outside of academia, this explanation often results in a deer-in-the-headlights look, as that awkward cricket sound plays in my mind.”
Having spent the first 13 years of her career in the corporate finance world, Osteen will happily take the cricket sounds because she loves working in academia. The business administration graduate finally found her opportunity to join higher education in 2013 when she accepted a position as the curriculum and administrative coordinator with the USC School of Medicine Greenville. When her current position became available in 2017, she jumped at the chance to be involved in an array of business management and grants administrator tasks.
In the five years since, Osteen also earned an M.Ed. in Learning Design and Technologies from USC’s College of Education. With a full-time job and a son to raise as a single parent, she persevered to complete her degree in 2021 – an achievement she calls her proudest moment during her time with the Arnold School.
“It was an amazing experience to participate in the ceremony while my son, who was a junior at USC at the time, was in the audience,” Osteen says. “The following year, I was in the audience as he participated in his ceremony.”
The Staff Spotlight Series is sponsored by the Arnold School's Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.