2009 IMPACT and EXCELLENCE Award Winners

2009 IMPACT and EXCELLENCE award winners

INNOVATION
Fred Pena, Chemical Engineering

Fred Pena was nominated for the Award for Innovation for the impact that he has made on students and faculty in Chemical Engineering. His innovative approaches in helping students to construct new experimental systems, provide support for laboratories, and ensure the smooth functioning of the chemical engineering research programs are a valuable resource to the department. His hard work has helped new faculty to quickly transition to ASU, thus resulting in minimal downtime in their research program. Overall, his support for the research enterprise in Chemical Engineering has helped the department to sustain its high level of quality research. The exceptionally high value that is placed on Fred’s efforts can best be exemplified by the fact that many students acknowledge Fred’s technical assistance in their journal papers and other written documents that are submitted (e.g. qualifier and comprehensive exam documents).

MENTORING
Dawn Takeuchi, Civil, Environmental, and Sustainable Engineering

Dawn has taken on the role of mentoring department staff and faculty in University business practices. Dawn stepped down as department Business Operations Manager (BOM) two years ago for personal reasons, but has served as a key mentor and resource not only for the new BOM, but also for other department staff and faculty. This has been particularly important considering the many changes in Department and University business practices over the last two years. Dawn has played an important role in mentoring the new BOM and has done so enthusiastically. Dawn also helped train a new accounting specialist, a new office support specialist, and a new research coordinator over the past two years. Dawn has also done her best to train CESE faculty in proper account management procedures, often patiently explaining the same process or regulation to the same faculty member multiple times, always with a good attitude and a smile on her face. Dawn's dedication to the success of the department and her unselfish commitment to mentoring of department faculty and staff are unsurpassed and deserve recognition.

PERFORMANCE
Darleen Mandt, Electrical Engineering

Darleen Mandt is the principal contact between prospective, admitted, and graduated electrical engineering graduate students. The number of students she deals with is staggering. As an example, some semesters there have been almost 1600 applications (PhD plus masters) and close to 800 enrolled graduate students. She handles all these students from the beginning to the end of their electrical engineering programs. Darleen is efficient and ultra-dependable, always on time, and always the last to leave the office. She works longer hours than she really should. She often works through the lunch hour as well. In addition, she handles her work with joy and shows compassion for the many problems encountered by the graduate students. She has been instrumental in producing a data base for electrical engineering graduate students that includes information not otherwise available from the University. She worked with the Graduate College to develop a streamlined method for handling the many (1600 or so) applications that we often have for the Fall semester. Darleen is as good an employee as one could imagine. The quality of her work combined with the amount of work she accomplishes is remarkable. She is most deserving of the Performance Award.

ACHIEVEMENT
Shaun Usman, Engineering Technical Services

Because of Shaun’s work and creativity Fulton is running some of the latest technologies that enhance our school and make everyone’s job that much easier: virtual servers, SMS server (delivers applications to Fulton computers), and the ASU SharePoint server. He really put Fulton in the spotlight for partnering with UTO on the successful SharePoint project. Because of his knowledge and commitment to the project (originally created and administered by him and one other staff member in UTO) UTO offers SharePoint sites to Fulton members at no cost! Each site costs $1500. Aside from what Shaun does for Fulton and the University, he continually educates himself without requiring funds from his department. Shaun reads technology blogs like no other person that I know to monitor what is new and potentially beneficial to Fulton as well as what threats exist that could impact the security of our digital data. Fulton truly gets their “pennies worth” from Shaun.

CUSTOMER SERVICE
Matt Lavery, Engineering Technical Services

Matt Lavery has contributed to Engineering by setting a standard for excellence in his role as Carpenter. Matt’s craftsmanship is a reflection of the pride he takes in his work and the great care he takes to make his “customers” happy. As a new assistant professor, I am amazed that Engineering Technical Services succeeded in remodeling my lab space in a little over one semester. Matt was one of those people. I appreciated that he would ask my opinion during custom construction and cabinet installation jobs so that I would be happy with the end product. I was impressed that even after my lab was functional and lower priority than his other jobs, he would stop by to see if things were going well. He even dropped off some shelf brackets that were left over from another job because he remembered that I needed a couple (unbeknownst to me). This is merely one example of Matt’s attention to detail and his “I care and I can do” attitude, which I believe are assets to the Engineering College and make it possible for me to do my research.

TEAMWORK
Karen Burrington and Brian Goehner, Chemical Engineering

Karen Burrington and Brian Goehner are being nominated for the Award for Teamwork. Although Karen and Brian have been in Chemical Engineering (ChE) for only a short time, they have had a significant impact, and exhibited exceptional teamwork and innovation in their approaches to undergraduate and graduate student activities. A prime example was the innovative approach that Karen and Brian took in helping ChE students to get to know each other and to relax before their final exams. Karen and Brian worked together to initiate a holiday open house/networking session that consisted of food items and “goody” bags for the students (which were painstakingly assembly by Karen and Brian in a huge bag-stuffing event one late evening). All ChE undergraduate and graduate students were invited, as were the staff and faculty. During this particular event, students were seen not only engaging in the wonderful treats (donated by Karen, Brian, the remaining ChE staff and some faculty), but also talking about classes and good study habits for finals. This was the first time that such an event had been held in Chemical Engineering, and provided an excellent forum for the undergraduate and graduate students to mingle and support each other during a particularly stressful time of year for students. The event would not have been possible without the excellent teamwork of Karen and Brian. This teamwork extends to other areas as well. Both Karen and Brian have shown excellent efforts in developing novel information systems that help in capturing data that are routinely needed for reports within the department and engineering, to assign faculty and graduate student teaching duties, and generally aid in the excellent functioning of the chemical engineering department. Again, the teamwork that they have shown in sharing approaches and executing their original ideas is excellent, and has led not only to enhanced communication amongst students, but even more efficient operations within the department. It should also be noted that they have a level of enthusiasm and willingness to try new approaches to enhance productivity and efficiency that is refreshing.

EXCELLENCE
Stacy Esposito, Electrical Engineering

Stacy Esposito is the main point of contact for sponsored projects, proposal and award processing, and accounting. She is an excellent supervisory staff member who takes her job extremely seriously, and implements it with perfection. She regularly goes above and beyond her usual routine, working additional (often weekend and evening) hours to help the faculty she is working with. Perhaps most importantly, she takes the ownership of the individual tasks, and makes sure they get done by her staff (or by herself) in a timely manner. Her hard work and dedication are not only seen in the work she puts out but it is also reflected in those who work for her. She brings her team together with team building exercises that allow them to develop better communication with one another.

Stacy Esposito has excelled in making all administrative aspects of proposal submission a smooth and well-structured process. The level of service that she and her staff provide to faculty is outstanding. She and her team make sure the proposal budgets reflect faculty input and meet the oftentimes compacted sponsor requirements. Both projects involving only ASU investigators as well as projects involving subcontracts with other institutions are handled swiftly and carefully by Stacy and her team.

Stacy's most important goal is that you, me, and the whole EE department succeed. There is no better qualified candidate for this category.

From the moment that Stacy was hired, we felt that a transformation overtook accounting in EE! We had an answer to every question, and Stacy found accounting mistakes that were buried for years! As the research advancement manager now, taking care of all our proposals and budgets, Stacy goes way above and beyond the call of duty. Despite how busy she is, in charge of so many proposals in EE, she still takes time to answer last minute questions; she calls program managers and get answers to our last minute problems; she never looses her patience or cheerful disposition; she finds different proposal opportunities for us, based on our research areas; she thinks of how to team people together in big proposals; she demonstrates great leadership skills with the staff she supervises; and she definitely creates positive and motivating work environments (from a simple welcoming smile to an arts project idea where different people can paint a small square on a big canvas and relax for a few minutes!) Overall, her dedication to her work is outstanding, and her work is excellent. Stacy is one of the most deserving staff members in Engineering that I know; she is the perfect candidate for the Excellence Award as her contributions to EE and thus Engineering overall are invaluable.

She has been the best among all grant support people I have ever worked at ASU or elsewhere.