2003 Staff Awards
3 September 2003
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
I am pleased to announce the winners of the Department's fourth annual Outstanding Staff Awards. The selections were made by the Chair and Vice Chairs based primarily on a vote of the staff, with additional input from faculty.
Gift certificates of $100 are awarded to:
Richard Brown
Denise Clark
Tom Holbrook
(Citations are attached below)
Awards of $750 and a certificate suitable for framing go to:
Ed Schlechty
Jack Zuefle
(Citations are attached below)
Congratulations to you all!
Peter
Ed Schlechty is one of the staff members who consistently performs at the highest level. In addition to the management of the Human Resource system for the department he also manages the Procurement System and the General Ledger. These systems all underwent substantial changes over the past few years and, thanks to Ed's diligent and dedicated efforts, the implementation of the changes went so smoothly as to be largely unnoticed by most faculty, staff and GTAs. For many months Ed routinely put in very long days days (as well as weekends) to ensure the absolutely smooth operations of the department. Additionally, Ed continues to expand his role as a manager, helping with training and coordination of the fiscal staff activities.
Jack Zuefle continues to provide the department, as well as other university units, with the highest quality printing service possible. His efforts have played an important role in the support of the teaching, research and service missions of the department. Every year, tens of thousands of examinations are printed securely and produced in a timely fashion for several units around the campus. Jack's shop provides copying services; produces preprints, announcements, student support materials for the Counseling Office, MSLC, Orientation Services and EMPT. He and his staff (which consists entirely of student employees) reliably manage to get the job done on time. Through wise management, Jack has reduced the department's per page copying cost to a level significantly lower than rates available from commercial and other university vendors. Additionally, this year Jack has expanded his role to include aspects of procurement as well as general ledger activities.
Richard Brown is known as the 'godfather' of the Mathematics and Statistics Learning Center tutor rooms. He maintains a contstant presence, keeps everything running smoothly, and does whatever is needed to get the job done. Richard has only taken one day off during the academic year (in the past 5 years), and that was for his son's wedding. We managed to cover for him, but it wasn't easy; we had birds in the tutor rooms, broken pencil sharpeners, locked doors, and students running around asking "where's Richard?" Richard is well known and well liked by the department, and by students all across campus.
Denise Clark has demonstrated exceptional performance in a wide variety of tasks from assisting with conference organization to handling electronic and paper correspondence to general office assistance. In everything she undertakes, Denise consistently performs in a timely and competent fashion. She is completely reliable, shows initiative and interacts positively and professionally with faculty staff and students.
Tom Holbrook continues to show his value to our department. As the number of computers continue to increase, along with our reliance on them, Tom's responsibilities also increase. Over the past two years, we have added over 60 additional computers, which has led to an increase in the amount of help he must provide. It also means he must deal with more problems than in the past. Tom has a great ability to listen to our customer's problems, figure out a solution and help them get their work done is invaluable to our group. Tom is an invaluable asset to the computer support group.