Jennifer Arnold
Boynton Health
Nominated by: Jamie Suchy
Value Demonstrated by Employee: Collaboration
Jennifer has gone out of her way to collaborate with the medical school PT program. Her efforts have allowed physical therapy students to obtain clinical experience in the face of decreasing opportunities due to COVID. These opportunities will allow students to sit for their board exam this summer when they may not have otherwise.
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Ross Becker and Al Livingston
Student Unions and Activities
Nominated by: Ben Vogel
Value Demonstrated by Employees: Resiliency
Ross and Al are on-site every day throughout the pandemic shut-down keeping our building systems running and maintained, as well as helping with the odd thing that comes up requiring improvisation during this unprecedented time.
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Margaret Belew, Katie Kasner, Amy Bakken and Maggie Vertalino
Boynton Health
Nominated by: Jamie Suchy
Value Demonstrated by Employees: Inclusion
Margaret Belew, Katie Kasner and Amy Bakken have quickly established a new way of delivering their services, via telehealth. This change has allowed employees from other campuses to access care and services that they would not have otherwise.
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Scott Boe
Boynton Health
Nominated by: Laura Classman
Value Demonstrated by Employee: Collaboration
Scott has been phenomenal with keeping my colleagues and I posted on changes and updates with communication with our office. He takes the time to discuss concerns and questions over the phone and in small group Zoom meetings. He's continued to have a positive attitude with all of the changes that have taken place over the last month and continues to be a strong leader during these challenging times.
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Jessica Chung
Leadership Minor
Nominated by: Christine VeLure Roholt
Value Demonstrated by Employee: Collaboration
Jessica Chung illuminates so many of the OSA values in her day to day work with staff, instructors, and with her students while teaching. Jessica shines when she is in collaboration with others, and people are drawn to her invitation to co-create. Jess cares deeply about both the process and the outcome, which means she takes the time to seek out many perspectives, open spaces that allow new voices and ideas to emerge, and pauses to ask critical questions. In this past month, Jessica worked with all level leads to develop a new curriculum that is manageable for both instructors and students in the online context, developed teaching tools with instructors as they moved online, co-hosted a weekly session for all Leadership Minor instructors to hone their craft of teaching while working through the new alternative format online, worked with SUA and student staff to continue building a marketing and brand strategy, and probably most dear to her heart, has collaborated with students in her class to create a meaningful, connected community focused on leading in challenging times. Jessica's art of collaboration within the department and outside regularly opens doors for new possibilities, partnerships, and our program better serving students. Thanks Jess for working tirelessly to collaborate in ways that make our program stronger!
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Mary Daubney, Christina Regan, Princess Nwaudo and Erika Ludorf
Student Unions and Activities
Nominated by: Connie Lemire
Value Demonstrated by Employees: Student Centeredness
Thank you to Mary, Christina, Princess and Erika for your work on student payroll. They have spent countless hours over the past month interpreting the University's pay provisions for staff and especially our student employees; from re-allocating work study funds, adding additional pay and verifying student hours for nearly 300 students. It was an “all hands on deck” approach to enter these changes, keep updated on HRMS pay instructions and meet the payroll deadlines. Thank you for your hard work and determination to make sure our students are getting paid!
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Leah Erickson-Batesky
Boynton Health
Nominated by: Kim Schundy, Jennifer Krzmarzick, and Deborah Dunst-Wald
Values Demonstrated by Employee: Resiliency and Collaboration
Leah Erickson Batesky, RN Primary Care lead, is everything you want to have working with you side by side in a Covid-19 health crisis. She is steady, organized, available, calm, deliberate, collaborative and kind. Leah has been amazing and is well deserving of recognition.
Leah was covering for a nurse manager who was out after an operation. When Leah signed up for this, there was no hint of COVID. Immediately after Leah assumed this leadership position, COVID struck. Leah was unflinching in her response to this challenge, though new to the job. She was collaborative, creative, hard-working and a fantastic colleague during this very difficult time. We at BH cannot thank her enough!
Leah's direct supervisor went on leave right before the pandemic. She assumed supervisor responsibilities, providing a smooth transition in helping to facilitate education and workflows with regards to COVID-19. Leah worked with providers, nursing, lab and building services, allowing for coordination of care for our patients and staff. Her hard work and presence allowed for a professional and calming environment for both staff and patients.
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Beth Galatis
Student Unions and Activities
Nominated by: David Hill
Value Demonstrated by Employee: Resiliency
Beth has worked hard to keep up constant valuable conversation and communication with her large number of student staff. She is able to ride through the ambiguity of our situation with professionalism and her students appreciate her very much for maintaining an anchor to campus.
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Mary Beth Kluesner
Recreation and Wellness
Nominated by: Karen Lovro
Value Demonstrated by Employee: Accountability
Mary Beth serves as RecWell's Accounts Receivables Professional. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, RecWell has been placed in the extremely difficult and unprecedented position of having to process thousands of refunds for services to its students, staff, and faculty members. Never before has there been the sheer volume of financial transactions necessitating action on behalf of RecWell, let alone in such a limited window of time. These transactions have and will continue to have an extreme and challenging impact on RecWell's revenue streams and overall budget. To aid in completing this task, Mary Beth created, implemented, and managed a multitude of processes and procedures to document and complete these refunds. She has instituted a process that not only meets the needs of RecWell and its members, but she has developed a methodology that ensures University financial policies, procedures, and auditing principles are met.
Mary Beth has risen to the occasion, without complaint or hesitation. She has taken on the challenge and still managed to retain her incredible sense of humor. While this recognition has been "cataloged" under Accountability, it could just as easily could have been identified as outstanding service under Advocacy (for our members), Collaboration (for working so efficiently and effectively with other RecWell staff members in this effort), and most certainly Resiliency (because she's still standing!). Thank you Mary Beth, you truly are one in a million.
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Katie Koopmeiners
Office for Community Standards
Nominated by: Sharon Dzik
Value Demonstrated by Employee: Collaboration
Katie Koopmeiners has worked with many others around campus to keep the AIM (Academic Integrity Matters) program going strong during this time of social distancing. She has had to work with office staff and many volunteers around campus to keep everyone engaged in a way that keeps students involved in learning about academic integrity and accountability. She and others quickly implemented a creative alternative to in person meetings.
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Mary Larweck
Boynton Health
Nominated by: Lisa Montpetit
Value Demonstrated by Employee: Collaboration
Mary is Boynton's Infection Preventionist and has steadfastly pursued the best practices to keep Boynton staff and patients safe. She continues to do this amid much adversity at times, but her perseverance makes our clinic one that others in the community look up to. She has worked closely with other departments at the U such as Environmental Health & Safety and the College of Public Health, all in the interest of providing best-in-class leadership for our clinic. She has been working relentlessly during this COVID-19 crisis to stay on top of the latest information with regard to infection prevention. She has also been training nurses and providers on how to safely don and doff personal protective equipment. As a result of her collaboration with Environmental Health and Safety, Boynton also has 2 PAPR's (Powered Air Purifying Respirator) that are now used to protect our staff from exposure. Mary is highly respected in her field, and I always learn so much from her. In addition to her expertise, she is incredibly empathetic and always wants to do what is best.
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Anna Lifson
Care Program
Nominated by: Sarah Gustafson-Dombeck
Value Demonstrated by Employee: Personal/Student Development
Anna has exhibited extraordinary trauma informed advocacy, guidance, and coaching skills to faculty/staff and students. Her time and talent have provided opportunities to increase coping skills and support each other in meaningful and productive ways. Thank you, Anna!
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Al Livingston
Student Unions and Activities
Nominated by: David Hill
Value Demonstrated by Employee: Student Centeredness
Al has been the only person on site at the St. Paul Student Center for the past few weeks. Beyond everything that he does on a regular basis to keep our building functional, he is really doing an amazing job ensuring that the St. Paul Student Center remains open for use, despite not having a lot of support staff on site.
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Mental Health Clinic
Boynton Health
Nominated by: Anonymous
Value Demonstrated by Employees: Wellbeing
The mental health clinic has done some amazing work in establishing mental health care through telehealth. It was amazing to see that folks were able to work so quickly to establish as much as they could to support the students. From the corona team of members who initially laid the ground work for the rest of Boynton, the therapists who reached out to individual students to let them know we are offering Zoom, leadership practicing transparency, and to the front desk staff working right on the front lines to keep the clinic open and answering hundreds and hundreds of calls coming in, they all did amazing work to come together. To hear that they are working at 70% capacity is incredible and seem to be carrying so much for Boynton and the University right now. Students are in need of support, especially now and onward since we are all in a mass trauma during this pandemic, and the mental health department is ready to support them.
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Brittany Ottum and Rachel Hogness
Student Unions and Activities
Nominated by: Steph Broom
Value Demonstrated by Employee: Student Centeredness
Rachel and Brittany were able to create video clips for virtual trivia in 72 hours, including working on it the day of the event to try to make it more like our in person trivia nights.
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Maytham Somji
Leadership Minor
Nominated by: Christine VeLure Roholt
Value Demonstrated by Employee: Student Centeredness
While much of Maytham's work focuses on navigating University systems and office operations, he brings a high level of professionalism balanced with deep care, empathy and strengths in relationship building. In these past few months, Maytham has spent many hours a week focused on supporting students through this stressful and ambiguous time. He helped our student associates build new working patterns from home, adjust work schedules to accommodate their changing availability and our office needs, while working with HR to ensure they remained whole. One of his supervisees recently shared that Maytham takes time when they meet every week to connect in a meaningful way, and recently they played this person's favorite board game to reconnect. Maytham supports our TA program with 30 students, providing training on on-line support, along with meeting individually with them about their learning goals and how the classes and instructors work effectively. As one of our advisors in the Leadership Minor, Maytham is always working to find the best solution for students, and advocates for their needs while ensuring policies are followed. He listens deeply, spends time getting to know each person, and works tirelessly to find a solution in collaboration with the students. He always holds the student experience and perspective at the heart of our conversations and decisions!
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Student Events and Entertainment Team
Student Unions and Activities
Nominated by: Erik Dussault
Value Demonstrated by Employee: Student Centeredness
I would like to recognize the great work by the Advising and student staff of the Student Events and Entertainment team who have developed many virtual events throughout the past few weeks and coming up with the engaging Gopher Grams program (z.umn.edu/GopherGramUMN). Sounds like tons of students, staff and faculty are enjoying this way to connect and recognize each other!
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Kathy Yang
Boynton Health
Nominated by: Jill Wooldridge
Value Demonstrated by Employee: Collaboration
Kathy has been a leader throughout this transitional and rapidly changing time in our clinic. As the Patient Assistance & Information Supervisor, she and her staff are the very hub of communication with our patients, especially once we closed our online appointment booking. Despite the increase in calls, she has lent her support to many other initiatives, from providing runners for escorting patients, to creating mail-out kits for our STI screening project. She always is willing to help, and offers support to our nurses, lab, pharmacy, providers, and patients as well. She is excellent at problem-solving and is creative with her solutions. She is unwavering in her dependability. And most of all, I appreciate her consistently positive and unflappable outlook in the clinic!