Ella Aho
Recreation and Wellness
Nominated by: Venessa Fiedler
Value Demonstrated by Employee: Student Centeredness
Ella is continually moving forward through this constantly changing environment with our student staff's well being as a top priority. She has done a wonderful job pivoting to online engagement with our staff to offer opportunities for them to socialize with each other, have a safe space to talk about what their new normal looks like, and provide engagement and development opportunities. She provides wonderful insight and ideas, and does so while navigating her new normal at home with kiddos and undertaking online learning. She is an invaluable member of our Youth Programs, RecWell, and OSA team and is a wonderful representative of the value we place on our students, and how much we care about them.
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Rebecca Leighton
Boynton Health
Nominated by: Susan Sarapa
Value Demonstrated by Employee: Advocacy
Rebecca works tirelessly to advocate and provide nutrition to students and others with food insecurities. She does this all year long but in a time of crisis, she has gone over and beyond the call of duty. She demonstrates all of the values which makes it hard to pick only one. She is an inspiration!
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Dennis Lui and Boynton Building Services
Boynton Health
Nominated by: Kendall Miller
Value Demonstrated by Employees: Accountability
Boynton's building services team has been hard at work making sure the clinic has the PPE it needs in order to be safe and are doing this work with less student workers than usual. They definitely should be recognized for their hard work and dependability during this time!
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Holly Martin
Boynton Health
Nominated by: Stacy Rohan
Value Demonstrated by Employee: Wellbeing
Holly has been kind enough to make and donate masks to employees and their families at the Boynton Dental Clinic.
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Karmen McQuitty
Student Legal Service
Nominated by: Paula Leahy-Schmidt
Value Demonstrated by Employee: Collaboration
During this time of social distancing, Karmen continues to look for ways in which staff connects with each other. Karmen has taken on the responsibility of scheduling the Landlord Tenant Attorney weekly meetings and the Admin. staff meetings (which meet twice a week). Another way Karmen encourages collaboration within our unit is checking in with staff by sending gmail chats and fun videos.
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Pepper Meyer
Boynton Health
Nominated by: Jacalyn Laketa
Value Demonstrated by Employee: Resiliency
Pepper, in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, has completely overhauled Boynton Health Pharmacy's operations. She led the charge to implement curbside pick-up, to increase our mail delivery capacity and ensure all pharmacy staff were set-up to work remotely from home. All through this, she takes the time to check-in with staff on a personal level and always tries to include everyone's feedback.
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Alex Montes
Boynton Health
Nominated by: Anonymous and Christina Walker
Value Demonstrated by Employee: Student Centeredness
It was difficult to choose just one of the values listed above, because Alex has been so consistent in embodying student centeredness, collaboration, inclusion and advocacy for the students in the mental health clinic and beyond. Even before COVID-19, Alex had been engaging in outreach and collaborative efforts with multiple campus offices that are home to many students who have higher rates of mental health concerns, and can experience additional barriers to accessing mental health care. Since COVD-19, Alex has continued to be creative in reaching out to students by co-hosting Instagram live conversations on resiliency and healing during COVID-19 with the Chicanx and Latinx studies department as well as the Gender and Sexuality Center. I feel lucky to be able to learn from and work alongside Alex, and I know our students feel the same.
Alex continues to go above and beyond in student outreach. Even before COVID-19 struck, Alex was consistently involved in supporting campus groups/communities with their mental health goals. Many times these outreaches were after she'd already put in a full day's work at Boynton. COVID-19 didn't stop her. She continues to advocate for the inclusion of marginalized identities and uses whatever resources are at her fingertips to educate and empower students to care for their mental health. During this crisis, she has taken the time to do Instagram Live Q&A sessions with a couple of groups on campus. Where does she find the time?! I nominate Alex for her tireless and relentless focus on student mental health and wellbeing.
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Ann Zedginidze
Boynton Health
Nominated by: Kathy Crothers
Value Demonstrated by Employee: Collaboration
As clinic manager in the Boynton Health Clinic, I can honestly point her out as the one person who made our transition from face to face visits to telehealth visits possible so quickly. There were many people who worked tirelessly to make it happen but WOW! she really shined. She went so far above her current role and through it all, has become a leader in our clinic. Every staff person owes her some debt of gratitude in pulling off an entire workflow change in two days. Please, please acknowledge Ann, in some way...there's so much more I can say! She has truly been amazing! The University is very lucky to have her on staff!