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Rochelle Robinson-Dukes has been the Olive-Harvey chapter chair since 2008. While Robinson-Dukes was never chapter chair before, she certainly was active in her union. There are reasons for that.

 

Her father was a union member and an engineer for ComEd. His experience with that union was a good one. Later, he went into management, and didn’t care for some of the aspects of that job. As Robinson-Dukes says about her own job, “I’m so glad that I have tenure.”

 

Nothing was handed to Robinson-Dukes on a silver platter, neither tenure nor anything else. She graduated from Whitney Young High School, attended Bradley University as an undergraduate, and she was awarded an M.A. in English Literature from De Paul University. Her last year of graduate school, she tutored at Daley. She taught part-time at Kennedy-King for two years, and then came to Olive-Harvey as a part-time teacher. Her students and colleagues got along with her; soon she was working full-time.

 

Robinson-Dukes liked the fact that OH was unionized. In her early teaching career, when she taught at DeVry University (where there is no such thing as tenure), she noticed that some people were not getting raises just because the appropriate administrator did not like some aspect of their personality. As she put it, “During my pre-tenure period, I saw situations where I felt I had to fight. If I do fight, it will always fight for the right.”

 

Her union gave her a post on the College Union Voice as a journalist/photojournalist. She gave five years to that position. Eventually, she found time to marry an engaging fellow named Marc Dukes, and Rochelle Robinson-Dukes was happening in every sense. 

 

Now, as chapter chair, Robinson-Dukes notes that membership apathy is always a challenge. She deals with it and other union issues and problems via three methods:

 Robinson-Dukes has produced an electronic newsletter to tell the chapter members the latest news. Developing and expanding the newsletter is her current project.

 

When asked what she does with her vacation time, she is a perennial traveler. “I like to visit Africa and Europe. I’ve been to Egypt, Italy, France, Germany and Austria. I even took the ‘Sound of Music’ Tour in Austria.” 

 

Robinson-Dukes’ film tastes are diverse. The best films she has seen in the last year are Spike Lee’s “Bamboozled” (2000) a drama addressing race and class issues, Frank Capra’s classic comedy “It Happened One Night” with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, which swept the Academy Awards in 1934, and the dramatic “Dolores Claiborne” (1994) by Taylor Hackford with one of Kathy Bates’ best performances.

 

When she is not traveling or watching movies, she is working for her church, Augustana Lutheran Church of Hyde Park, playing tennis at her health club, or working on a committee for her sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.

 

You’ll be seeing more of Rochelle Robinson-Dukes in the days to come. She is a comer.