Meet Tammy Tromba! 🧸
January 1, 2026
Tell is about your current position as the Senior Program Assistant of the Biology program here at UBC.
I applied to this job straight after graduating with my BA in Political Science, that would have been in May of 2003. Not only had I already been working for 7 years at Canadian Tire as a customer service but I had volunteered with Girl Guides. These two experiences showed on one side that I had experience in community outreach. On the other side, I liked working with teenagers, which is not too far off from working with undergrads. I was hired right away, and I started working here January '04.
How has your position changed over the 20 years you have been at UBC?
At first, I started off as what was originally the biology secretary. Basically, I worked directly with what back in the day, would have been the director of Biology, who at the time was Martin Adamson. At first, a lot of my duties were correspondence, taking minutes, maintaining the copier, the fax machine; it was a much more clerical job in nature. At times, I did a little bit of financial stuff, too; I had a petty cash and reconciled all the first year Biology accounts.
A couple of years in, they added time scheduling and I became the timetable person for Biology. Initially, I worked with John Gosline, because he was the faculty representative at the time. Within the first year, I fully took it over to become the Biology timetable representative, which involved doing all of the course scheduling.
The next promotion might have been the jump to Program Assistant. I did that for a good number of years until I was also asked to do the TA assignments in the summertime. That included hiring undergraduate students and a lot more academic advising over the years. Before this, there used to be a team of 6 to 7 faculty as program advisors. Now it's pretty much just me and the Associate Head. So, over the years I've taken on a lot more of an academic advising role. I also helped with reviewing the curriculum details that I notice require updating in the calendar. Currently, I schedule our courses, hire all of our undergraduate students, plus all the normal student inquiries.
During your time here, how and when has the Biology program been restructured?
When I first came in, the Biology program had a much more complicated structure. We had, I want to say, nine different majors, a couple of combined majors and the honours with all the different streams. Back in 2011, it was simplified to the Biology major, and the Combined Major with oceanography, or the Combined Major with Chemistry. A general Honours biology specialization was added, as well, just to help students who wanted to explore more than one area of Biology. That was a really massive curriculum change to happen to the program. When these changes happened, it streamlined the advising and it was a lot easier because the majority of our students were Biology majors.
How did you end up applying for a job at UBC?
I did my degree, half at York University in Toronto and half here at UBC. I'm originally from Toronto, Ontario. I came out here when my mom got recruited to work in Graduate Studies as the Associate Dean of Finance and Human Resources. So, the whole family packed up and moved across the country. I just transferred universities, and that's how I ended up in Vancouver and at UBC, sometime back in early 2000’s.
What have been the challenges and accomplishments of your job?
The most recent challenge was the massive change to the platform we all use, which is Workday. As with anything, there were some serious growing pains, things not working as intended, finding out what was broken, trying to get it fixed in a timely manner. In my busy time, I am very busy, but with the addition of Gigi, a couple years ago, and now with Jessica on board, we now have quite a good team going and work-life balance is definitely way better in the last few years. Because during my peak periods, I would be a ball nerves because just the volume of inquiries was ridiculous. Now there's a team of us answering the shared inbox.
What gives me the most kind of sense of accomplishment is seeing students I've helped throughout the years, move on, and be successful, because I love when they come back and chat. Some of the past Girl Guides, have even come to UBC Biology, which is always fun because it's like, oh, I remember you! On a day-to-day basis, just being able to help students that come into the Biology office, and they're having a rough time of it, and if I can alleviate that somehow: whether it's helping them or letting them down as gently as I can. But if I can, make them leave the biology office with either smile on their face or them feeling better about the whole situation, that’s makes me feel happy.
You mentioned your volunteering with Girl Guides. Tell us more about this.
Well, I was a Girl Guide myself back in Toronto. I always enjoyed it. My mom was my guider. I'm actually a 4th generation member of Girl Guides of Canada. I saw how much Girl Guides did for me and for my mother, and even my grandmother because for a woman to go camping back in, what would that been? 1911? That was pretty rare. When I was in my last year of university, and saw a posting up on one of the pillars around campus: “Girl Guide leaders needed”. I had a lot of fun being a Girl Guide so I decided to give it a try as a guide. When they asked me which age group I want to work with, I chose the teenage group. So, they paired me with the 58th Pathfinder and I have been with the 58th Pathfinder leader now for 23 going on 24 years. A couple years later, when my first group of Pathfinders was graduating out of Pathfinders, they asked me to start a Ranger unit. So, I did because I wanted to keep this group of great girls. I've been working with these two units since 2004. Just to clarify: Pathfinders are girls who are 12 to 15 years old and Rangers are girls from 15 to 18.
The main part of Girl Guides is to empower and teach girls to be independent, to have leadership skills, to help them prepare for the world out there in a fun and safe and supportive environment that allows them to be themselves. That's why, Girl Guides has always stayed as an all-female organisation, led by females, run by females, for females. For example, we teach camping skills, public speaking and we even get into some financial planning. We usually get a bank specialist in to come talk to them, but it is meant to help prepare them for the world out there.
What's the parallel between your job at UBC and the Girl Guides?
I want to say the advising role links both of them. I like to support people in their planning for the future: about what's next, what's coming, and how to plan for it. Whether it's their next adventure, planning their next adventure camp, or planning their next year. In both cases, it is the same sort of planning for what's next, and I really like advising them to sort the best path. I have seen students be successful, or previous Pathfinders or Rangers be successful!
What is your favourite hobby?
I play both board games and computer games and that's actually how I met my husband. I've been playing the computer game World of Warcraft since 2008. It's an online multiplayer exploration type game where you can play solo or work in teams to complete objectives. We've been playing that game ever since and we still do. My favourite boardgame came out a couple years ago called Mysterium. It's a kind of a mixture between Clue and Dixit. It's a cooperative game and you're trying to work together collectively to guess the "who done it".
Every year for the last 10, we actually organize a weekend board game camp with the Girl Guides’ Pathfinders and Rangers. We set a little challenge for them, to encouraged them to try different games and to play with different people. At the start of the camp, we organize a trivia game where we put them in teams and they have to earn all these random trivia questions, but they're just put in random teams and they have to work together. It's been a huge success.