July 21, 2018

2018 UAA staff awardees announced

Undergraduate Academic Affairs

Congratulations to the 2017-18 Undergraduate Academic Affairs staff recognition and distinguished partner awardees. Selected for their dedication to supporting UAA’s mission of creating innovative academic experiences for undergraduates, these 23 staff members made an indelible impact on the UW’s students, faculty, staff and community.

And the awardees are…

Award for Excellence
• Lisa Bruce, Assistant Director for Learning Resources, Student Athlete Academic Services
• Josh Gibbs, Director of Information Technology, Office of the Dean

Outstanding Achievement Award
• UAA Workday Transition Team: Nermine Botros, Kelly Chapman, Sylvie Lapointe, Kim Lee, Chloe Mahar, Christine Muongchanh, Nanette Rosenthal, Iryna Schmidt and Mark Wu
• IASystem Team: Raquel Chavez, Luda Kourenina, Trevor Leffler, Joanna Loss and Debbie McGhee

Outstanding Student Employee Award
• Annie Lewis, Lead Tutor for the Writing Center, Academic Support Programs and Peer Advisor, Undergraduate Advising.
• Ann Margaret Stompro, Coordinator of Environmental Alternative Spring Break, Pipeline Project

Distinguished Partner Award
• Leilani Lewis, Assistant Director, Diversity Communications Outreach and Jeanette James, Manager of Strategic Initiatives and Projects, Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity
• Office of Regional and Community Affairs

Award for Excellence

Awarded to employees who have worked in UAA for at least five years, this award celebrates the employee’s leadership in creating formative student experiences and building the necessary infrastructure to support their vision. Lisa Bruce shaped all student athletes’ undergraduate experience by transforming and elevating the tutoring systems and processes. Through the use of innovative technologies, Josh Gibbs built computer systems and software to ensure that UW’s students’, faculty and staff have the tools they need to have a leading-edge student experience.

Lisa Bruce, the humble builder

“Lisa is a no-nonsense and high output individual, whether working one-on-one with students or executing initiatives/task relates to the Student-Athlete Academic Services (SAAS) tutoring program. It is easy to see the lasting impact that Lisa has on her students because they often stay in touch or stop by to see her when they are on campus. She is quick to celebrate the achievements of others, and she never looks for recognition herself — instead, her focus is on the experience and success of our student-athletes.”

— Student-Athlete Academic Services department

Achievements of note: Named the Intercollegiate Athletics Star Performer in 2018 for her growth mindset, committed service, humility and grit. Provided high-level leadership in areas of scheduling, managing, training and mentoring tutors. Overhauled policies, procedures and systems for the SAAS’ tutoring program, resulting in higher tutor job satisfaction and significant cost reductions without change to the students’ experience with the program. Traveled with the men’s basketball team to China in 2015, playing an important role with helping the students get the most out of the cultural experience and assisted with a class they were taking to prepare for the trip.

Josh Gibbs, the technology guru

“While Josh’s contributions to the undergraduate experience stand out, it’s his caring and genuine support of our staff that I get to see most often. Josh has a philosophy that’s visible across his daily interactions and present throughout the technological infrastructure he has built here. The philosophy that we each come to UAA with our own unique knowledge and experience, talents and preferences, and that the role of technology in our work should be nothing more than a set of tools to boost what we’ve already brought with us.

— Jeremy Caci, Software Engineer, Office of the Dean

Achievements of note: Led UAA through several generations of technology, providing support and tools for effective work. Built the Assigned Advising Dashboard to help advisers manager their caseloads and student check-in systems for advising, CLUE and Dawg Daze. Developed check-in and tracking systems for the Commuter and Transfer Commons and the Center for Learning and Undergraduate Enrichment. Manages student data for UAA.

Outstanding Achievement Award

Recognizing the innovation, collaboration and tenacity it takes to initiate change, this award acknowledges the teams behind some of UAA’s innovative programming. The UAA Workday Transition Team prepared UAA for the largest administrative transition in UW’s history. The Instructional Assessment System [IASystem] Team responded to the feedback from the Transforming Administration Program (TAP) initiative survey, and is now updating the IAsystem to better serve the faculty’s needs.

UAA Workday Transition Team, the magicians of change

“They made this transition easy for us by taking on all of the hard work themselves. They all took time out of their regular work to take hours of training to prepare our unit for Workday. They worked well as a team and were effectively able to make sure all individual departments were taken care of and that no employee would go without a paycheck in the process.”

— Micah Trapp, Executive Assistant to the Vice Provost and Dean, Office of the Dean

Achievements of note: Attended two years of monthly status meetings leading up to the launch date. Identified the impact of changing business processes and workflows for each unit, and revamped processes as necessary. Responded to six months of repeated requests for data collection and cleanup of employees in the payroll system. Constructed the new “sup org” model of identifying and organizing all employees within UAA. Completed 40-80 hours of training each. Served as first point of contact for all staff and students during the transition period.

Team members: Nermine Botros, Kelly Chapman, Sylvie Lapointe, Kim Lee, Chloe Mahar, Christine Muongchanh, Nanette Rosenthal, Iryna Schmidt and Mark Wu.

IASystem Team, the astute architects

“In my estimation, what Debbie, Joanna, Luda, Raquel and Trevor are doing with this project is truly outstanding in several ways. First and foremost, while many around the UW have approached the TAP initiative with a great deal of caution, the IASystem team has seized it as a genuine learning opportunity. Further, they have embraced the entire process with an uncommon sense of wholehearted humility — something that is especially hard to do when the results and action plans are publicized to the whole institution.”

— Jason Johnson, Senior Associate Dean and Associate Vice Provost, Office of the Dean

Achievements of note: Improved IASystem training and user experience by offering links to additional resources. Added the ability for instructors to create and manage their course evaluations. Enhanced communications with faculty through quarterly emails. Addressed concerns about response rates by offering updated best practices. Built a stable base of college/university licensees of IASystem. Built and released a new version of IASystem in response to customer needs and interests.

Team members: Raquel Chavez, Luda Kourenina, Trevor Leffler, Joanna Loss and Debbie McGhee

Outstanding Student Employee Award

Student employees are an integral part of the UAA staff. This award recognizes the outstanding achievements of two student employees. Annie Lewis’ leadership as a writing tutor and a peer advisor has helped the Center for Undergraduate Advising, Diversity and Student Success become more supportive for our students. Under Ann Margaret Stompro’s leadership the Pipeline Project’s Environmental Alternative Spring Break Program (EASB) has had more applicants in the past three years and has been able to expand the student team.

Annie Lewis, the analytical innovator

“Her innovation can be seen in her commitment to making our center stronger both in terms of our daily operational procedures and the critical thinking around writing. Annie is not afraid to raise important and often difficult but critical questions about the support needed for an organization to thrive. She is also not afraid to have challenging, but nuanced and necessary conversations with tutors she has to oversee. I think she’s been remarkable in this regard, as it is quite difficult to move from being a peer to being a peer-leader.”

— Ryan Burt, Senior Program Manager, Academic Support Programs

Achievements of note: Recipient of the Bonderman Fellowship, the Thomas Paper Prize, the Grand Prize of the Library Research Award, the Dean’s Medal for Social Sciences, the Husky Leadership Certificate, the Peter L. Thorpe Scholarship, the Fay A. Wilson Scholarship, and the Honors Undergraduate Scholar Award. Member of Phi Beta Kappa. Presenter at the 2017 Spring Celebration of Service and Leadership and the 2017 and 2018 Praxis Conference. Undergraduate nominee for the Luce Scholars Program.

Ann Margaret Stompro, the giving leader

“She builds leadership through creating a platform for others: Ann Margaret was an excellent facilitator of the winter EASB class, and was prepared each week with a comprehensive PowerPoint, but didn’t need to always be in the spotlight. She distributed leadership opportunities among others and always was open to feedback and ideas. Her ability to distribute leadership opportunities has led to more students than ever interested in continuing in EASB with a leadership role in the program next year.”

 — Sarah Bishop, Assistant Director, Pipeline Project

Achievements of note: Led and coordinated the EASB Program for two years. Trained students on developing curriculum for the program. Successfully grew the EASB program from a student team of 4 to 5. Incorporated Pipeline Project’s racial equity goals into the EASB course.

Distinguished Partner Award

The Undergraduate Academic Affairs Distinguished Partner Award recognizes a colleague, program or department whose collaborations with Undergraduate Academic Affairs have made significant advances in the University of Washington’s undergraduate academic experience. These collaborations enhance, enrich and deepen the undergraduate experience. The reciprocity of these relationships benefits undergraduates and the broader campus community.

Leilani Lewis and Jeanette James, leaders of change

“Leilani Lewis’ and Jeanette James’ work with the UW’s Race and Equity Initiative, is broad-reaching and has been influential across UAA through hiring, on-boarding and other HR practices, influencing communications work, to steadfastly moving this critical work forward in a host of other ways. Though they are based out of the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity, their work stretches across and into so many aspects of campus, and their partnership with UAA truly has been distinguished.”

— Ed Taylor, Vice Provost and Dean of Undergraduate Academic Affairs

Office of Regional and Community Affairs, stewards of community

“Sally Clark and her team in the Office of Regional and Community Affairs have been visionary and stalwart partners in our work to launch the Othello-UW Commons site. UAA and other areas of the University have been involved in community-based work in South Seattle for decades, and this project provides a space to gather, to more deeply anchor our work in the community, and Sally’s community expertise and enthusiasm for this project have been invaluable.”