{"id":11730,"date":"2022-10-20T14:10:22","date_gmt":"2022-10-20T18:10:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/staffsenate\/?p=11730"},"modified":"2025-08-03T10:31:26","modified_gmt":"2025-08-03T14:31:26","slug":"meet-the-senator-kristi-westphal-thomas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/staffsenate\/2022\/10\/20\/meet-the-senator-kristi-westphal-thomas\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Senator- Kristi Westphal-Thomas"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a\">\n<div dir=\"auto\">\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11702\" src=\"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/staffsenate\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/370\/2022\/09\/Westphal-Thomas-Kristi-resize-214x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"214\" height=\"300\" \/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Staff Senate will be doing a &#8220;Meet the Senator&#8221; series this academic year, letting all staff know who their Staff Senators are. In the spotlight this week is <span class=\"xt0psk2\">Kristi Westphal-Thomas<\/span>. Kristi is an HR Specialist at WCU and this is her first year on Staff Senate. She is currently serving on the Staff Engagement Committee. When Kristi was asked &#8220;Why Western&#8221; she responded with &#8220;my husband and I moved here in January 2019 from another UNC System university. He was offered a position he couldn&#8217;t refuse, so after months of applying, I finally landed a job as an Executive Assistant. There was no turning back, then. WCU has become our home.&#8221; Her favorite part of her job is getting to perform all new hire (faculty and staff\/temps) intakes and onboarding. This means that she gets to meet all new employees before their start date- the excitement they all have for their first day and the infinite possibilities working for WCU or a higher education institution can bring. She stated, &#8220;Their anticipation alone brings me joy.&#8221; A fun fact about Kristi is that she gardens. She has a mega huge pumpkin patch in her back yard! Twenty plants all cultivated from seed in May. She also has a large veggie garden. We are so glad that Kristi joined us on Staff Senate this year and look forward to spending more time with her in the future.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Staff Senate will be doing a &#8220;Meet the Senator&#8221; series this academic year, letting all staff know who their Staff Senators are. In the spotlight this week is Kristi Westphal-Thomas. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3285,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-staffsenate-information"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/staffsenate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/staffsenate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/staffsenate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/staffsenate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3285"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/staffsenate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11730"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/staffsenate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11733,"href":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/staffsenate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11730\/revisions\/11733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/staffsenate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/staffsenate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/staffsenate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}