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Brent Belanger, David Vein, and Chris Carpenter
Recreation and Wellness
Nominated by: George Brown
Value Demonstrated by Employees: Resiliency
Brent, David and Chris all are working as essential employees within RecWell and at the Les Bolstad Golf Course. These three are doing all types of course maintenance from cutting, aeration, over seeding, top dressing, and preparation of all areas of the course. They have worked tirelessly doing what would normally be the work of easily 3 times as many staff.
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Dave Golden
Boynton Health
Nominated by: Mikaela Robertson & Becca Leighton
Value Demonstrated by Employee: Student Centeredness
Dave’s extraordinary commitment to student wellbeing and public health at the U have never been as clear as they are right now. Dave has been instrumental in facilitating Boynton’s response to COVID-19, assisting with the rapid transformation of service delivery across the clinic, working with the Learning Abroad Center and Housing & Residential Life to screen and house students placed in quarantine, coordinating protocols and testing with the Minnesota Department of Health, and supporting Boynton’s communications team in communicating rapidly and effectively about the many changes for students accessing care. Dave has been so instrumental in responding to COVID-19 that he set an out of office message last week to let campus partners know he would be away from his email for an evening but could be reached by phone. Our campus is extremely fortunate to have Dave as its Director of Public Health right now!
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Anne Hodgson
Boynton Health
Nominated by: Mikaela Robertson & Becca Leighton
Value Demonstrated by Employee: Collaboration
Anne’s impressive ability to pick up new knowledge and skills with lightning speed has proven invaluable in Boynton’s rapidly shifting response to COVID-19. She stepped in to help train providers to use Zoom, allowing them to continue serving students remotely; she has worked countless long days and evenings to ensure staff are well-equipped to continue their work without interruption; and she has used her broad network of relationships within the clinic to respond to needs as they arise and ensure that lines of communication are open. Her willingness to jump in and do whatever needs to be done has facilitated Boynton’s nimble response to this unprecedented public health challenge.
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Bri Johnson
Leadership Minor
Nominated by: Jessica Chung
Value Demonstrated by Employee: Student Centeredness
Bri is our resident expert on creating engaging online learning experiences for students, staff, and instructors. With everything happening with COVID-19, she jumped in and went absolutely above and beyond to create a shorter B-Term course offering for students returning from study abroad mid-semester due to the virus. This was on top of everything else she was already doing and teaching, because she wanted students to have options to make progress on their degrees. Her talents for strategy, online learning pedagogies, and care for students' development is breathtaking and she deserves kudos (and a nap).
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Laura Knudson
OSA Advocacy & Support
Nominated by: Sarah Gustafson-Dombeck
Value Demonstrated by Employee: Advocacy
Laura has been working tirelessly to support all of her units. She has engaged with campus partners through numerous online meetings to brainstorm how to support students and has been a champion in streamlining processes to provide resources to them.
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Maggie Kubak
Career and Internship Services
Nominated by: Career and Internship Services
Value Demonstrated by Employee: Collaboration
Maggie demonstrates every one of the OSA values. A recent example: Maggie took the initiative to reach out to her students with a creative and uplifting message that balanced the importance of self-care, with career tips and resources they will need to launch job and internship searches during this difficult job market. The message included pictures of Maggie cheerfully illustrating her points, doing yoga, connecting online, and keeping up hobbies! Beyond this she is taking great care to communicate proactively with faculty and advisers related to her majors, researching strategies to develop micro and virtual internships, and has on multiple occasions offered to help cover the caseload for others on the staff if needed. To use one of her favorite words, Maggie deserves recognition a 'gazillion' times over!
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Syressa Lewis and the Student Group Service Team
Student Unions and Activities
Nominated by: Erik Dussault
Value Demonstrated by Employees: Advocacy
Syressa and the Student Group Service team have creatively sought solutions to all the challenges that have been presented over the past few weeks to ensure that student groups, and the work of many student leaders, is remembered when many areas are changing and adapting to our new situation. Syressa has done an amazing job of keeping staff connected, and their team productive and energetic throughout the process.
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Karen Lovro
Recreation and Wellness
Nominated by: George Brown
Value Demonstrated by Employee: Accountability
Karen has exhibited continuous poise and grace in working with complex financial decisions and calculations based on an ever-changing climate with the many areas of operations and economic impact. Karen has produced detailed and thoughtful analysis and reports in a timely manner. She is reviewing all RecWell processes and procedures and working closely with all staff, providing updated information on-going.
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Sarah MacPhail
Recreation and Wellness
Nominated by: Mary Beth Kluesner
Value Demonstrated by Employee: Collaboration
Although Sarah demonstrates all of the values noted, I am selecting COLLABORATION as central to why Sarah should be recognized. Sarah works as an A/R Specialist and is the responsible person within our Finance Team that ensures all RecWell point of sale transactions are reconciled daily and balanced. This is no easy task as it is, but under the current circumstances, Sarah has approached each new contingency with a collaborative, thoughtful approach. She wants to ensure our membership, regardless of type (student, alumni, faculty, staff), are all responded to in a timely manner in case of a refund or adjustment for their Center for Outdoor Adventure trip or group swim lesson. As Sarah's co-worker within Accounts Receivable, I feel so fortunate to be navigating along her side during this especially dynamic time!
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Kirk Marshall
Boynton Health
Nominated by: Maurice Perkins
Value Demonstrated by Employee: Collaboration
The COVID-19 pandemic has placed a tremendous amount of stress on the University, especially the student population. Coupling the fear of a virus with the uncertainty of and complexity of healthcare is not the easiest thing to communicate. Boynton is challenged with this, and Kirk has accepted this challenge working around the clock updating/creating coronavirus/COVID-19 webpages to ensure UMN wellbeing.
During Boynton's COVID-19 transition in care, working more than 12-hour days, Kirk disseminates our massive communication via the web, social media, and email. He is on the proofreading team that ensures equity, diversity, and inclusion in all of our communications and marketing.
Most recently, while balancing the increased workload from the pandemic, Kirk displayed remarkable collaboration by sharing his skills when asked to create the webpage for the Assistant Vice Provost candidates with a tight deadline.
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Meaghan Miller Thul
Parent and Family Program
Nominated by: Laura Knudson
Value Demostrated by Employee: Collaboration
Meaghan has gone above and beyond in her communication and responsiveness to parents since the start of COVID-19. She has worked many long hours, including weekends and evenings, to get timely information to parents and to answer really difficult questions from families. She remains positive and willing to serve families even when the questions, concerns, and followup seem endless. She has enhanced her collaboration skills even more by working with University partners and U Relations to provide timely information to parents that is in line with University expectations. She has also thoughtfully brought parent and family concerns forward to University administrators in a way that helps them strengthen their work during this time. I am proud of her work as a colleague and representation of OSA to families.
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Marcus Pobloske and the Campus Elections Team
Student Unions and Activities
Nominated by: Erik Dussault
Value Demonstrated by Employees: Student Centeredness
Marcus, and team, have worked tirelessly over the past week to meet the challenging needs of the Campus-wide elections during this difficult time, all the while responding to students. Marcus, and team, have worked to ensure students are well represented in all of the elections.
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Marissa Suiter and the Student Events and Entertainment Team
Student Unions and Activities
Nominated by: Erik Dussault
Value Demonstrated by Employees: Wellbeing
Marissa and her team have done a fabulous job of creatively offering alternative programs for students, staff, and everyone that focus on ways for us all to remain enriched during this time. Marissa, and team, had been operating in a way that made it very easy for them to transition to our new virtual work space and haven't slowed down throughout this process. Their plan for the Goldy Grams program, where students (or anyone for that matter) can leave notes for their fellow students that then get delivered to perhaps brighten their day or bring some positivity, received over 100 submissions right off the bat!
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Chloe Vraney
The Aurora Center
Nominated by: The Aurora Center Staff
Value Demonstrated by Employee: Advocacy
Chloe is a fierce advocate who has a “no fear, do what’s right” attitude. Her savviness helps her have tough conversations with campus partners which makes her a strong advocate for the students, staff, and faculty that access The Aurora Center’s services. Chloe works diligently to ensure she’s up-to-date on new policies and laws, and shares with the rest of our team when relevant. Chloe is extremely personable and you can see that truly shine when she’s collaborating with campus and community partners as an Aurora representative. Her dependability is evident - Chloe wants only the best for our clients and when discussing ways to improve our services, she brings a perspective that we didn’t necessarily see or say. She is a true testament to what a strong advocate embodies: flexibility, determination, knowledge of the system, and the ability to empower victims/survivors. Chloe’s “settle for nothing less” mindset is what makes her a change-maker and driving force in the advocacy field. Her advocacy isn’t limited to our clients, Chloe pushes for the development of our volunteers as peer advocates and strong leaders in the work against sexual and relationship violence. Chloe is humble in every sense of the word - she does all of this while pursuing her Masters in Public Policy at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. Chloe is an asset to and valued member of The Aurora Center, our campus, and our community and is incredibly deserving of this recognition.