Location: Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
Jennifer works with 50% of the Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Graduate Programs Office and 50% with the Undergraduate program. She assists with preparation and submission of general Grad School petitions, preparation and submission of general Registrar petitions, sets up and records M.S. final exams, and performs data capture of Ph.D. benchmarks, curriculum substitutions, and much more. Due to Jennifer’s efforts, the Academic Programs are operating with about a 25% higher efficiency. Additionally, undergraduate and graduate numbers are also the highest in the department’s history.
Location: College of Veterinary Medicine | Financial Services Office
The College of Veterinary Medicine opened a new Veterinary Clinic in Ocala, FL (May 2022) in partnership with the World Equestrian Center. Alice was the primary person responsible for equipment, service, and commodity purchases. She generated 96 purchase orders and 84 PCard transactions in the seven months before opening, totaling over $1.25M dollars. The level of difficulty and detail was, at times, very involved and intense. She handled this entire time with poise and impressive skill.
Location: College of Education |Dean’s Office
Ann is a Fiscal Assistant III and some of her duties are deposits, invoices, P-cards, requisitions, POs and reconciliations for most of the units under the Dean’s umbrella. Ann has assumed additional duties regarding recruitment to support the units that are hiring new staff. Ann developed a plan to organize and track some of the work and also establish clear communication lines with the different stakeholders to assess future needs. This past year, Ann has also taken an active role in training new employees and sharing her knowledge of university and college processes.
Location: UF Honors Program
Much of Gretchen’s job responsibilities center around honors courses, the core academic component of the Honors Program. Gretchen oversees course and room scheduling, course descriptions and syllabi posting on our websites, textbook adoptions, course evaluations, academic activity reporting, grading for certain IDH courses, and professional development funds for instructors. She has also been invaluable in helping our office set up our experiential courses that take place outside of the traditional academic calendar. Gretchen’s support is integral to the success of our transition retreats for new students. A new camp, One Credit to Rule Them All (OCRA), was created in 2022 in response to student and family interest in more opportunities for engagement with fellow Honors students before fall classes begin.
Location: College of Veterinary Medicine | Department of Comparative, Diagnostic, and Population Medicine
Kyle serves as an Academic Assistant II of the Department of Comparative, Diagnostic, and Population Medicine. Within a very short period of time, he took complete ownership of academic visitors and volunteers, locums, academic activity reporting, and serving as the first point of contact for general office duties. He also provides teaching support to faculty, arranges peer evaluations of teaching, and coordinates the teaching evaluation process, among many other duties. He is extremely innovative and single-handedly improved many departmental processes and activities (e.g., Academic Visitor Process, CDPM website, new faculty/staff announcements and seminar announcements, Qualtrics surveys).
Location: UF Health Affairs – Dean’s Office
Amy Lawson-Ross serves as the executive assistant to the CIO and CRIO in UF Health’s IT team. Amy has been essential to successfully recruiting 28 out 32 faculty members into 17 different departments. She is strategic and effective in all her work. Amy has been exemplary in managing schedules, serving as a key liaison across many departments, and contributing greatly to UF Health’s AI initiative.
Location: IFAS Innovation Lab for Livestock Systems
Nicole was hired to provide financial and administrative support for the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Livestock Systems (Livestock Lab). Since her joining the Livestock Lab, Nicole has become a go-to-person when issues arise with travel, logistics, processing travel expenses, and implementing other Livestock Lab-related activities.
Location: College of Dentistry
Karen has supported the department of pediatric dentistry for over 35 years. Over the past year, Karen has not only fulfilled her own duties as the Pediatric Dentistry Program Assistant, but she also “wore the hat” of Operating Room Coordinator when the position became unexpectedly vacant. Karen worked tirelessly to ensure that the pediatric population was able to obtain the treatment they desperately needed.
Location: College of Public Health and Health Professions – Dean’s Office
Gaylynn is an Administrative Support Assistant II in the Dean’s Office–she is the first face that you see when you walk into the Dean’s Office and often the first voice that you hear when you call the College of Public Health and Health Professions. Gaylynn is willing to help in any way to support the team and, ultimately, the mission of the college. During our new Dean search, she worked closely with the planning team to ensure that candidates were taken care of and that PHHP was well-represented. She has also become the main point of contact for donors and high-level visitors to the office. Due to Gaylynn’s efforts, the team has been able to take performance and quality of service to the next level.
Location: College of Veterinary Medicine -Small Animal Clinical Services
Morgan has been referred to as the face of the department of Small Animal Clinical Services on multiple occasions. She is known to be patient, kind, polite, positive, and responsible. During her time at SACS, Morgan has coordinated 34 faculty interviews, organized 27 different locums, and arranged 20 academic visitors. All of Morgan’s work is done with a smile on her face. Morgan goes above and beyond to connect to everyone she meets. Her commitment to making people feel valued has not gone unnoticed by anyone.
Location: College of Dentistry
Jessica Sanchez is the patient coordinator for the graduate endodontic department. In this role, she manages to juggle scheduling patients, updating referrals, phone calls, insurance, in addition to keeping track of the DMD students’ endodontic progress, to ensure there is an equal distribution of cases to help them graduate on time. Jessica has implemented different initiatives that have improved patient care, including but not limited to, drafting and distributing patient post-operative instructions, a system for efficiently sending post-op notes to referrers, and an improved system for managing the DMD’s student’s patient load.
Location: College of Veterinary Medicine
Lynn has been a long-contributing team member to the UF College of Veterinary Medicine in a variety of positions with the most recent role as coordinator for the Veterinary Hospitals Referral Office. Lynn played a pivotal role in veterinary practice at UF, filling in for approximately the two months of May to June 2022, during a time in which the small animal reproductive medicine service was without any supporting technician. She also took on direct support for SA Reproduction during this transitional period. Without her support, the SA Reproduction service would not have been able to continue the service’s expected level of care for its clientele and patients.
Location: IFAS Advancement Office
Heather has excelled in her professional role as Donor Relations Coordinator for UF/IFAS Advancement at the University of Florida. Heather is responsible for coordinating our SHARE council, the IFAS leadership council made up of 24 individuals representing donors along with multiple industries and commodities throughout Florida. Heather also oversees the two signature events, Flavors of Florida and Dinner of Distinction. Each of these events are large gatherings of 200-300 people, largely donors and volunteers along with university leadership.
Location: North Florida Research and Education Center – Suwannee Valley
Anthony has shown what it means to be superior in his work performance, which has attributed remarkable success for the regions and UF/IFAS. In the past year, Anthony was able to develop a system for installation that is now standard across multiple IFAS Research and Education Centers. Developing a systematic/procedural method of installation that can be replicated by other university institutions and researchers was never part of his normal work activities. He is now recognized across IFAS as the “drain gauge” expert and fields questions regarding all aspects of pumping and installation. Anthony’s knowledge and skill set have also saved NFREC-Suwannee Valley and IFAS roughly $220,000 in repairs and fabrication to farm equipment.
Location: Facility Services – College of Veterinary Medicine
Despite being in a role that’s often overlooked, Crystal’s kindness and effectiveness have garnered attention. Her work as a custodial worker is crucial to keeping the hospital running smoothly and ensuring that the facilities are welcoming. She takes ownership of her duties, going above and beyond by providing assistance even when it’s not within the scope of her job. Beyond maintaining the physical appearance of the college, Crystal radiates kindness to those around her, whether it is by greeting everyone with a smile or lending a helping hand.
Location: Hume Hall
Sandra’s role has been instrumental in maintaining the Hume area after the department was left without a direct supervisor. For 6 months, Sandra shouldered extra responsibilities. She led team meetings, managed supply inventory, filled in for sick coworkers, and directed the team all while completing her regular duties in nearly half the time. When the new supervisor arrived, Sandra’s work still wasn’t finished. She did everything she could to ease the transition and help the new supervisor acclimate to their role. Despite the additional work, Sandra always takes time to get to know each and every resident and is often praised by their families for taking such good care of their children.
Location: IFAS School of Forestry, Fisheries, and Geomatics Sciences
The Millhopper Campus has become Tim’s campus. Responding to a faculty request can be a great excuse to stop, or indefinitely postpone, trimming or mowing around the ponds on a hot July day. But these have become Tim’s ponds, and he wants them to look well-maintained. He is not merely working for IFAS, he is working for IFAS and himself, and this makes all the difference. So, he stops, responds to the request, then gets right back to work on the hard, but necessary, tasks at hand. Because of this mindset and incredible work ethic, the Millhopper Campus is better maintained now than it has been in years. The thousands of visitors that come every year for the Family Fishing Day or Fishing for Success programs are now greeted with freshly mowed grass, manicured ponds, and a parking lot that is trimmed and maintained. These visitors can now enjoy the outreach opportunities that are provided and leave with a sense that IFAS cares.
Location: Health Affairs – Lake Nona Building
When the HVAC system chillers were malfunctioning, Victor implemented a solution that would keep the facility running until all the chillers could be replaced. The building houses research facilities for the College of Medicine and the College of Pharmacy. As such, there are very strict requirements for maintaining the humidity and temperature of the building and its labs. Through Victor’s daily monitoring and methodical changes, he has optimized the HVAC system to run with 2 of the 3 chillers in poor condition. In addition, optimizing the system has significantly reduced greenhouse gas emissions and the cost of operating the facility.
Location: Housing & Residence Life
Anita accomplished a lot during summer building turnovers in East campus housing facilities stripping and waxing floors. While working in Yulee Hall, Anita provided a safer and useful method for setting up rooms, which saved staff time and reduced redundancies in their processes. Anita cares deeply for the residents she has in her assigned area, cleaning meticulously and respecting the needs of students who access the Disability Resource Center.
Location: IFAS | Agronomy Department
Jamie is an Agricultural/Food Scientist II where she fills the role of biological scientist. Jamie is a model employee who always goes above and beyond her position. However, her level of accomplishment this past year has truly been exemplary and warrants her nomination. In the past year, Jamie trained new employees from all labs in procedures for receiving and mailing boxes, UF purchasing procedures, notified other labs when their packages were delivered, coordinated lab inspections around the 350 complexes, and worked with new and old employees under five PIs to teach lab safety and proper chemical disposal.
Location: UFIT | Information Security Office
The University of Florida maintains a video surveillance system used to manage and monitor cameras deployed across the UF campus. Those cameras are monitored by the various units at UF who require surveillance of their areas and are also monitored by the University Police Department. In October 2021, we received an incident report suggesting that there was unauthorized access to the university’s video surveillance system which led to hundreds of cameras, and their associated recordings, being unexpectedly deleted from the system. To summarize, there was no security incident nor unauthorized access but rather the mass deletion of the cameras and video recordings were the result of a flaw in the system. It was Carlos’s willingness to go above and beyond, as well as his initiative and ingenuity, that allowed us to resolve that investigation.
Location: College of Veterinary Medicine | Department of Comparative, Diagnostic, and Population Medicine
Wendy is a senior veterinary technician and an integral, invaluable member of the Integrative Veterinary Medical team. Wendy excels at all aspects of her job description and contributes to the service in many ways beyond her job description. Over the past academic year, her department faced faculty clinician understaffing and given Wendy’s incredible specialty veterinary knowledge and experience, she was able to step up and help fill in gaps to maintain all the missions of the service (including provision of excellent patient care, client experience, state-of-the-art training for house officers, and student teaching). In addition, she took it upon herself to begin formal training and education of her fellow veterinary technicians on service, who have limited specialty knowledge in comparison to her own.
Location: UF IT | Information Security Office
The UFIT internship program was started after a discussion between Michelline and others in UFIT about how to provide an opportunity for people from underrepresented groups to better position themselves for careers in Information Technology. She developed a program of technical training and job mentorship to help the interns learn skills, gain marketable experience, and succeed in future job searches. After the success of that first semester, UFIT formalized the internship program and broadened the participation to all UFIT units, as well as opened internships up to all students of any institution, which has increased the applicant pool. The program has been extremely successful and has resulted in the hiring of two interns in the Information Security Office.
Location: IFAS Tropical Research & Education Center – Homestead
Yuqing voluntarily comes to UF/TREC every weekend to carry-out additional pollinations to increase our chances of getting the right genetic combinations in our breeding program. Because of the extra effort, Yuqing makes over 400 greenhouse pollinations (crosses) per year in the field.
Location: Florida Museum of Natural History | McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity
Deborah is a Biological Scientist III at the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity (MGCL), the Lepidoptera (moth and butterfly) research center of the Florida Museum of Natural History. Deborah has numerous and diverse responsibilities, and meeting those requires a unique blend of professionalism, knowledge, good humor and patience. Although often overlooked, Deborah has worked extensively over the years to help support and deliver informal science education learning opportunities. Deborah fully embraces the mission of increasing science literacy and offering diverse opportunities for the public to connect with the natural world. She has regularly worked with our public program staff to support larger programs and outreach opportunities, such as our annual ButterflyFest that regularly draws thousands of attendees.
Location: UF Health Educational Technologies
Adrian is always willing to learn about new technology and pitch in when needed, even without being asked. Most people never experience the pressure of being called to a class with over a hundred students or more waiting for you to not only identify the technology issue, but ultimately resolve it within minutes so class can begin, yet Adrian does this every day. To faculty, he is the superhero they are thankful to have during that moment. Adrian’s job is essential for the classrooms to operate at an optimum level. People like Adrian who are boots on the ground or behind the scenes are contacted most often when things are not working and don’t get all the accolades that they should.
Location: UF/IFAS-IRREC Plant Root Biology Laboratory
Laura Muschweck is a Biological Scientist I, and she manages the UF/IFAS-IRREC Plant Root Biology Laboratory like a well-seasoned scientific professional with decades of experience. Laura’s meticulous management of the IRREC Plant Root Biology Laboratory supported 15 researchers at different levels in 2021-2022. The researchers included an assistant professor, a visiting scientist, a postdoctoral researcher, graduate students, and interns. Muschweck’s supervisor, Dr. Lorenzo Rossi, estimates her effort is about 150% of what he would expect from a biological scientist working in his laboratory. When Muschweck began her position in the Plant Root Biology Laboratory, chemical waste was stored in the fume hood and greenhouses. Today, the lab is 100% compliant with university safety standards.
Location: IFAS North Florida Research and Education Center – Marianna
Tessa’s official title is Agricultural Food Scientist II. However, the duties in that category do not make justice for the tasks she performs daily. Her positive impact not only on NFREC but also on many programs in Gainesville, as well as on our local youth organizations, has been tremendous and deserving of such recognition. Tessa does not go the extra mile; she goes the extra 10 miles in order to continue creating impact and recognition for the University of Florida. She is truly mission- oriented and she finds her reward in the success of others, which often is directly related to Tessa’s outstanding performance.
Location: UFIT Business Center
Hiro is on the UFIT Customer Relationship Management (CRM) team and helps maintain and augment the Salesforce system for UF. The use of Salesforce and its companion tool, Marketing Cloud, exploded over the past several years for several reasons. The tools provide an effective way to manage interactions and questions from students, faculty, and staff across the core administrative offices. Perhaps more importantly, the demand for Salesforce is due mostly to the outstanding service provided by Hiro and the CRM team. Additionally, Hiro is often the person who comes running to help and is an expert at understanding institutional data and providing support on how to segment these key audiences at UF.
Location: UF Health Educational Technologies
Amanda’s focus as System Administrator is to ensure smooth functioning of the myTraining system in all areas. This includes providing technical support, remoting into workstations to help customers who are having issues completing their required training or acting as a liaison with training partners to successfully disseminate their training to specific audiences. During this nomination period, Amanda was instrumental in the onboarding of two events for Central Florida Health (CFH): Epic implementation, which was initiated in the training system in March 2022, and CFH PeopleSoft Implementation, which occurred in parallel in May 2022. Amanda not only supported all myTraining users (Provider, Nurse, Staff, etc.) when they needed help, but was willing to adjust her own personal schedule to accommodate a variety of schedules.
Location: IFAS | Entomology and Nematology
Alyanaya has transformed graduate advising in the Entomology and Nematology Department over the past year. She has developed a new Canvas Advising Hub for the faculty and students that compiles all the need-to-know information in one place. This has eliminated countless unnecessary emails and freed her and the Graduate Coordinator to address in-depth advising needs of students to support their success in the program. The combination of organization, efficiency, polite and professional demeanor have made her indispensable and positioned our program for future improvements that were not possible one year ago. Elena has injected this year of transition in our graduate program with professionalism and positivity. The major changes she implemented have truly transformed graduate advising in our department, but they did not happen easily—there was work on weekends and evenings when needed and Elena was always on call. As a result, the department’s graduate program is better positioned than ever to look ahead and plan for a future in which we can continue to deserve the title of #1 Entomology graduate program in the USA.
Location: College of Veterinary Medicine | Department of Physiological Sciences
Due to Laurel’s efforts, the faculty in her department were able to complete their faculty evaluation packages on time. Laurel checks grant budgets and also keeps track of the salary savings our department should receive. Due to her diligence, the department was able to recoup funds that had not yet been dispersed to our department in a timely way. Laurel’s ability to do what it takes to help the Department run despite us finding ourselves often in very difficult times just got reconfirmed recently, where she really shined.
Location: College of Engineering – Building Services and Operations
Renee is always willing to lend a helping hand to those around her. She personally walked the new supervisor in her area through all aspects of their job, sharing tips and tricks that she has learned along the way. Her training has helped several areas in maintaining their facilities. Everyone around her knows that if they need assistance, she is always available and more than willing to help.
Location: College of Veterinary Medicine
In 2021, Sarah served as the Learning and Organizational Development Specialist for the College of Veterinary Medicine. In this multi-faceted role, she helped non-traditional educators develop student-centered curriculum and supported the development and design of online and hybrid/blended technology-enhanced learning. During the nomination period, Sarah was the primary point of contact for almost 150 faculty members educational design questions, concerns, advice, sounding board. Sarah was instrumental in the college’s accreditation preparation. While continuing to navigate her new position, maintain her previous position, and train her new hire, Sarah was the primary reporter for the CVM mock-site visit in May 2022. As the only college of veterinary medicine in the state of Florida, accreditation is paramount and, without Sarah, impossible.
Location: College of Journalism and Communication
Besides her daily responsibility of advising students in the College of Journalism and Communication, Alicia volunteered to coordinate the college’s unique Immersion Experiences. These Immersion Experiences allow students to get involved in the five radio and two television stations in the college. Alicia signed up all 305 students who registered to participate in the experiences. Alicia also volunteered to be the college’s preview point person, leading to increases in enrollment. Alicia takes the initiative to improve the college in many ways that aren’t asked of her, whether it is updating the Florida presentation to rebranding the forms using the PATH office. Even with all of the extra responsibility she has, 98.76% of her advising students are satisfied with their appointment with her.
Location: College of Medicine | Department of Health Outcomes and Biomedical Informatics
For nearly 11 years, Carla Bredehoeft has proven herself as a dedicated and critical member of our project in a variety of roles. Since taking a management role in 2015, she has organized and streamlined the sprawling EQRO project, improving efficiencies and outcomes for team members and sponsors alike. Recognition for her numerous contributions is overdue. Carla is well-organized, proactive, and able to balance myriad responsibilities in a respectful and positive manner. She contributes added value and general benefit to numerous aspects of our research projects and operations. She plays vital roles in personnel recruitment, budgeting, financial administration, data management, communication and meetings with stakeholders, and research deliverables.
Location: Dean of Students Office
Serving as the Assistant Director for Care of both the Hitchcock Field and Fork Pantry and the Collegiate Veteran Success Center, Roselind Brown has been tasked with ensuring the success of both programs and has never let performance of either suffer because of her commitments. In this time, she has worked tirelessly to pursue new ways to locate and engage all military-affiliated students at UF. She supported the Pantry Coordinator by assuming weekend receiving shifts to ensure that additional items could be secured since a local donor was not able to staff week-day donations during normal Pantry hours. Additionally, Roselind initiated relationships with Collegiate Veteran Society leaders and members to understand their experiences and hopes for the Center and UF’s military affiliated community.
Location: College of Medicine | Department of Oral Biology
Christopher serves as a Research Programs Coordinator who always places the mission of the department at the top of his priority list. One critical task that Chris performs with excellence is to help incoming new faculty set up their labs by helping them navigate through EH&S and IACUC protocol approvals, order equipment and supplies, interact with the College IT, among all other things that are associated with starting a wet lab. The faculty, trainees, and staff within the Department have leaned heavily on Chris, his expertise, historical knowledge, problem solving skills and empathetic nature. Chris’s professional and empathetic demeaner coupled with his uncanny ability to ‘get things done’ whether he must ‘do it himself’ or ‘cajole’ others to accomplish the task, always ends up with positive results in action and in feelings.
Location: College of Dentistry
Kervin coordinated a large-scale remodel for the College of Dentistry, overseeing the process from start to finish. This included bidding, material selection, installation, moving equipment, and moving more than 50 staff, faculty and residents into temporary quarters while the work was being done. Kervin made this large move seamless for everyone involved.
Location: College of Nursing (JAX)
Ms. Davis is an Administrative Manager in the College of Nursing on the Jacksonville Campus and oversees the JAX campus skills & simulation laboratory. Ms. Davis is the first person with whom students interface on the JAX campus due to her proximity to students in the lobby of the CON office suite. This means she often is the sounding board for students sharing their issues and seeking guidance on how best to manage them. Ms. Davis selectively manages many of their issues, directing them to resources, and refers others to faculty or consults with them for assistance. Ms. Davis has developed such expertise in her duties that the annual cohort admissions are planned to increase from 40 to 60 students in Summer 2023.
Location: UF Online Recruitment and Outreach Center
Lyndsey embodies exemplary customer service in all she does as Admissions Officer II for UF Online. She puts the needs of students above all else. She is quick to respond to her colleagues’ questions, and she happily shares her wealth of knowledge about UF Online. Lyndsey exudes genuine kindness, patience, and compassion. This not only affects the prospective students she speaks with in positive ways; it also has positive ripples on the entire UF Online team. Lyndsey has been with UF Online for several years. During her time on the team, the UF Online program has risen steadily in the national rankings up to the #1 best online bachelor’s degree program in the nation, according to U.S. News and World Report. I am confident that Lyndsey is a key factor in UF Online’s success.
Location: College of Journalism and Communication
Sarah serves as the Executive Assistant to the Dean and beyond that role, she has offered assistance to nearly every major project in the College of Journalism and Communications – from the frank gathering each spring, to the Summer Media Institute, to our events with our advisory councils and so much more. She has come up with original ideas to help improve relations with our alumni, develop better communication among faculty and staff, and meet challenges such as COVID-related stresses among students and staff. Sarah has provided assistance and advice that has improved the department’s ability to plan and execute activities that bring the community together.
Location: College of Public Health and Health Professions
Within the college of Public Health and Health Professions, Lior Flum has distinguished himself as an indispensable contributor to the success of the college’s instructional mission. His accomplishments and professional attributes are great and many. For example, Lior has also been instrumental in the evaluation of numerous PHHP courses, utilizing the UF+QM rubric to methodically review courses for faculty and chairs. He uses the rubric to provide meaningful feedback to improve our course offerings and help chairs and program directors lead faculty in the growth of their teaching skills. He also successfully expanded his collaboration with faculty in the college’s professional programs, (Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Speech and Audiology), and immediately earned the respect of instructors, providing above-and-beyond ongoing support to new courses while maintaining excellent support for Public Health instruction.
Location: College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | Psychology Department
David Fowler serves as Administrative Support Assistant III. His job description includes Human Resources Administration, Student Administration, and Office Management. The Department of Psychology houses the largest undergraduate major on campus, with over 2,000 students between the residential Bachelor of Science and the online Bachelor of Arts programs as well as 98 graduate students in these five programs, leading to M.S. and Ph.D. degrees. Each of the graduate programs have different requirements in research training, clinical internships, coursework, graduate student teaching assignments, fieldwork, mentoring, and outreach activities. David is credited with keeping the programs running as smoothly as possible while faced with major transitions and restructuring.
Location: College of Medicine | Department of Emergency Medicine
Allison has invested so much time and support into the Department of Emergency Medicine. Since her arrival to the department, she has exceeded leadership’s expectation surrounding her investment in the Scribe program, management of the APPs, and has become an instrumental piece of the department. She has led the development and implementation of other clinical administrative processes, including the recruitment and retention of clinical scribes. Allison continues to create solutions to issues that arise within the department and does so with such professionalism and respect for her peers. She is patient and kind and provides forward thinking for programs that were previously left behind. Allison has taken on and successfully coordinated pieces of the APP program, which is outside of her current duties. Allison has applied the same investment into the APPs and creating systems that not only benefit the department, but the employees as well, as she has with the successful Scribe Program.
Location: IFAS | Facilities Planning and Operations
IFAS Facilities has been working on the new Blueberry Research Building for several years now. Joe’s involvement in the Blueberry Research building project was instrumental in ensuring that the project was completed per the design documents. Additionally, Joe took ownership of the project (specifically the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing scopes), meeting weekly with the various trade contractors. He also assisted in troubleshooting issues encountered with the complex building automation system of the project. He offered possible solutions to the trades and design team to assure that all design criteria were met.
Location: UF Information Technology
While Troy Haynes has a longstanding track record of success at this university, his meticulous and thoughtful approach to managing the UF Scripps merger was incredible. Due to the nature of this high-profile project and the deadlines the team faced, execution of this effort required coordination and countless focused and dedicated hours of planning to stand a chance of being successful and on time. Troy delivered. Troy uncovered complication after complication and was able to keep the project moving. He was unfazed and continued to drive his team to the finish line. His longstanding relationships within UFIT that allowed him to navigate this new and complex territory.
Location: Harn Museum of Art
Elizabeth Hinrichs is the Museum’s Assistant Registrar and Preparator – a full-time position that supports the main efforts of the Senior Registrar and preparators by assisting with the care and maintenance of the growing collection, as well as installation and deinstallation of exhibitions in the public galleries. Throughout her time at the Harn, Beth has been designated to lead several special projects including rehousing the collection’s African objects in storage, using archival materials and the best practices in the museum field; conducting and documenting a full collection inventory; and facilitating object study for class visits. These projects, as well as her daily duties of caring for and documenting the collection, directly benefit the University by providing cultural value to students and the surrounding community through the Museum.
Location: Business Affairs | Environmental Health and Safety
Brian exemplifies true Gator Nation spirit; he often works afterhours and on weekends to provide support for insurance claims, investigations, and other related work. Brian does not settle for the status quo nor does he do things how they’ve always been done. He goes above and beyond his normal job duties and has established positive working relationships with many campus partners. For example, he worked diligently to recover FEMA monies that were owed to the University of Florida from prior hurricanes, where IFAS facilities throughout the State sustained damage. Initially, FEMA repeatedly denied claims for three years. But after appealing the cases, Brian recovered $400,000 last fall.
Location: UF Health | Shands Vista
As project manager of the Anesthesia Registry team, Kim is extremely effective in her communication and follow up of the team. Kim is direct in her questions and seeks to understand the problems by participating in meetings with analysts to see first-hand the issue. Kim is prepared to answer questions effectively and honestly. She always follows up with meeting notes in a timely manner. Kim is a great facilitator, keeping track of many minute details, running smooth and productive meetings and getting all required input to keep things moving forward in the configuration of the Anesthesia Registry.
Location: College of Pharmacy
Skylar is an instructional designer for the Curricular Affairs team at the College of Pharmacy. Although he has only been with the College for about one year, his innovative problem-solving skills have had a tremendous positive impact on our team and also faculty, who benefit greatly from his talents in instructional design. A prime example of Skylar’s innovative problem solving is his creation of a comprehensive database system for managing and tracking absences in the Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) program. During the AY2021-2022, our academic coordinators fielded over 2,400 absence requests, each one necessitating an individual email response. The new absence request ticket system Skylar created avoids the need for individual email responses, since they are now autogenerated and the absences can be approved with a click of a button.
Location: IFAS | Agronomy Department
Dr. Kannan has taken extensive responsibilities in Dr. Altpeter’s lab, including field planting, field management, crop harvesting, greenhouse maintenance, vector construction, gene transformation, transgenic plant characterization, data analysis, manuscript preparation, presentation in professional conferences, and so on. The diverse tasks on him and excellent outputs from these tasks manifest his desire to not only excel on what he is doing, but to be proficient and productive.
Location: Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering
Kimberly has supported the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering fellowship programs with her exceptional service to all constituents and her tremendous work within the program. She has implemented new and improved steps, including contacting student awardees in advance of payment for appropriate paperwork & signatures, developing a timeline for student payment and communication to all parties involved, checking in with student awardees for questions through the deposit of funds into their accounts, developing 5-year tracking of student awardees and amounts and confirming multiple times a year for accuracy, which is critically important as some students leave before graduation and new students are re-awarded in their place.
Location: College of Medicine | Graduate Medical Education
Sony has been an integral part of UF Health’s GME annual operations and a huge reason incoming house staff onboarding goes so smoothly each year. Sony has worked closely with Identity Access Management, Epic Training team, and myTraining in fine-tuning this onboarding process over the last ten years. During this nomination period, Sony helped successfully onboard 295 residents and fellows. In addition, he manages to keep the GME office in compliance by effectively tracking each program’s training assignments. He currently has an above average completion rate of 90%. Sony’s attention to detail and passion to find solutions for the GME programs shows his dedication to strive for success and make this community a better place.
Location: IFAS | Microbiology and Cell Science
Since her hire, Jacqueline’s responsibilities have been to serve as academic advisor for our Ph.D. program with 60 students and our online M.S. degree program with over 750 students. Jacqueline has managed the growth of these programs expertly without a single complaint from any student or faculty member. Over the last year, Ms. Lee led an effort that allowed the department to save $150,000 per year. A year ago, the department relied on the distance learning services of the College of Pharmacy, which managed the admissions and enrollment for the online M.S. degree program. Jacqueline led a very carefully planned process where we made the adjustments needed to learn how to do these processes ourselves.
Location: College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Jaye has worked to improve accounting systems, methods for managing million-dollar grants and has worked tirelessly with all our faculty to enable them to work on their research with minimal hassle on the financial/paperwork side. Jaye has had to demonstrate creative problem-solving in our department on a weekly basis especially as he uncovered all the hidden problems, lack of documentation, no mirror systems or management of any grants or projects, and basically a failing system prior to his arrival. He basically had to gut what existed and start over and, as you can see from the CLAS and Shared Services support, he has done an amazing job. Jaye is generous in his knowledge and guidance regarding resources that are beneficial to graduate students. For example, he has helped students with the completion of their letters of appointment for graduate assistantships, managed tuition waivers, aided in travel logistics and submissions of financial requests. He has helped many students register for conferences, manage their awarded funds and grants, and his attention to detail has resolved many disputes.
Location: UF Planning, Design & Construction Office
Rachel Mandell has been working for the past several months, beginning in February 2022, on an effort to update the University’s Conservation Area Land Management (CALM) Plan. This plan defines the management strategies for over 455 acres of natural campus lands. Rachel has been co-leading this effort with Kaylee August of the Office of Sustainability. Throughout this planning process, Rachel has demonstrated professionalism and good character as she has embraced an inclusive participatory process and shared her successes with her co-leader, Kaylee August, and intern, Hillary Laskey. Rachel and Kaylee have taken a perfect approach to leadership in their roles, encouraging ideas and feedback and suggestions from all concerned – working across a diverse array of people on our campus. They organized and led visits to all 31 conservation areas and then have offered well-organized Zoom/discussion sessions to determine the best approaches going forward for each natural area. The CALM committee has made significant progress through their amazing leadership, organization, goodwill, and inclusive approach to problems. They also have employed some very innovative approaches to gather information on the use of our natural areas, including QR code signs in conservation areas to obtain feedback across campus. As co-chair, Rachel has organized a vast CALM steering committee from many UF institutional departments and local agencies to collect data and analysis all the feedback, address safety & ADA concerns and develop/update a biodiverse species inventory that covers all these beautiful conservation and wetland areas. Some of the core values that have been set include full participation, sharing collective wisdom for inclusive solutions, embracing creativity, supporting open & equitable discussions and having fun.
Location: Planning, Design, and Construction
During and after the COVID-19 Pandemic, Lori worked tirelessly to outfit the entire university with safety features. While managing this monumental task, Lori also became project manager for the Malachowsky Hall for Data Science and Information Technology and the Herbert Wertheim Laboratory for Engineering Excellence. She negotiated to prevent price increases that will ultimately save UF about $750,000. In addition to her excellent budget management, Lori has also helped develop unique details across campus. Most notably, she designed the orange gator skin wall design in the entry to the Wertheim Lab. Her work has truly brought the campus to life.
Location: College of Engineering
Jessica McCarty is the senior advisor for Computer Science and Digital Arts & Sciences within the College of Engineering. Her commitment to students and to both the short and long-term success of the department and its people—students, faculty, and staff alike—is unparalleled and worthy of university recognition. She handled the majority of student advising for both the Fall 2021 and Spring 2022 terms due to the department being short-staffed and inexperienced. She personally handled more than 1,000 students respectively in both terms. Jessica also initiated and successfully helmed an effort to move the student advising worksheet from Canvas to Salesforce, which made the department able to see approximately four more students per day in the Fall 2022 term than in the Fall 2021 term.
Location: Clinical and Translational Science Institute
Lei McDevitt currently serves as a Data Management Analyst III for the Integrated Data Repository Research Services Center within the Clinical and Translational Science Institute. In this role, Lei serves as a lead analyst for the department and is a key member of the team. Lei serves as an honest broker for the University and is responsible for servicing research requests that provide data to foster the research mission for the multitude of health specialties within UF Health. Lei reviews IRB protocols, gathers requirements for various request types, and develops software to efficiently disclose and release medical information that adheres to exacting regulations. Dr. McDevitt brings true professional attributes to the UFIDR and genuinely cares about delivering excellent quality work. Lei strives to integrate both an understanding of the big picture strategy and goals of individual research teams, as well as attention to detail.
Location: College of Education | School of Teaching and Learning
In Dr. McMorrow’s role, he deals with all academic things in the School of Teaching and Learning, from scheduling and grading, to graduate school policy, petitions, and problem solving. His knowledge is vast, and his customer service orientation is outstanding. In the past year, he has worked with academic support personnel in the other two schools to share his strategies for schedule development: building and joining sections for multiple audiences or hybrid delivery modes and protocols for naming sections to identify audience, delivery, and day/time. He also supported the Deans area staff with innovative ideas for our college-wide classroom reservation system for Norman Hall, using shared Google docs for all three schools to request and manage the use of our classrooms.
Location: Business Affairs | Technical Services
Many people know Troy as the go-to guy for anything related to plans and utilities. He has been instrumental in tackling Business Affairs Technical Services’ LiDAR initiative. BATS uses this technology to geographically locate buildings, utilities, and other asset information above and below the ground on and off Main Campus. This initiative has shown to be beneficial for underground and above-ground utilities, construction projects, and so much more. Troy has spent countless hours both outside taking LiDAR scans and inside processing them. Troy then also updates our GIS information from these scans to ensure that our infrastructure is as accurate as possible. From inside the lowest trench to the top of the highest building, Troy has traversed much of the university to get that perfect scan.
Location: Florida Museum of Natural History
Sadie has been a has been an essential coordinator and has been largely responsible for developing the successful core team within TESI. Sadie largely wrote a proposal to the Thoreau Foundation ($40K) to fund our new “Environmental Leaders Fellowships.” This program engages UF undergraduates from diverse backgrounds not typically represented in the environmental sciences. Sadie worked tirelessly to develop this project from the ground up. She organized the monthly mentoring activities, scheduled meetings and outings, and fundamentally was responsible for the success of the first cohort of Thoreau ELF Fellows. Sadie’s report was so compelling that we were invited by the Thoreau Foundation to resubmit for a continuation of the ELF program. This simply would not have happened if Sadie had not stepped up to take leadership of this project.
Location: College of Medicine
Susana Morales is a financial aid advisor serving the UF College of Medicine students. She works tirelessly to assist incoming, currently enrolled, and graduating students with their financial aid during the different stages of their degree program. Susana willingly committed to working additional hours to support her students; she developed a series of lunch-and-learn sessions to assist students with financial wellness and debt management after graduation. Working with student leaders, she created a curriculum and timeline that provided just-in-time information. Due to her efforts, medical student satisfaction has improved to a 77.6% rate (above the national average of 70.4%).
Location: Business Administration – IT Business Office
Krista has worked to improve the offerings of the print shop while simultaneously reducing the costs. Within the past year, Krista began offering personalized notepads, bookmarks and more. When Krista identifies an area for improvement, she takes the initiative to research it and implement it effectively. For example, she spearheaded a move for the department to provide fulfillment services. These fulfillment services are faster than the previous external service provider and save the university $24,000 a year.
Location: College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
John is a superb advisor and colleague in the English Department, deeply knowledge, patient, and affable. His doctoral training in literature gives him particular insight into the literature program, such that his student advising isn’t only about, say, the nuts and bolts of the curriculum (prerequisites, sequences, tracks, and so forth) but also about its content – about literary material and interpretive methodologies. John also excels in his commitment to program and curricular innovation. In AY2021-2022, for instance, John initiated a new protocol for increasing the success of students in planning and completing honors theses. This past year, he has also helped to improve and track internships as well as post-BA job and graduate and professional school placements. He prepares and maintains detailed records about enrollment, which has helped enormously in recent planning.
Location: IFAS Public Relations
Sam Murray is a leader in the UF/IFAS public relations team and went full-time virtual when she moved to Atlanta in Fall 2021. Since then, an amazing number of things have happened, and Sam has consistently performed above and beyond her assigned duties. In the past year, Sam has taken steps to further develop her crisis communications skills which has served UF/IFAS well as she has been able to guide and counsel faculty and other communicators through (or around) some sticky situations. Through her ongoing work with UF Health Screen, Test & Protect, Sam has been integral in connecting messaging for UF Health and UF/IFAS Extension, mobilizing communicators for the Clinical and Translational Science Institute and Extension grant leaders to elevate awareness of a variety of health initiatives in rural areas, including important programs like TeleHealth and HealthStreet.
Location: Payroll Services
In addition to performing his regular duties as an Accounting Specialist, John has improved processes and created efficiencies in the areas below by creating workbooks that have process instructions and links. Although John had quite a bit of technical knowledge when he started in Payroll Services for many of these efficiencies, he spends his own time researching how to create Excel efficiencies to help our manual processing. In addition to this work, John is exceptionally reliable and hard-working. He never minds staying to complete a task and always enthusiastically offers to help. He continuously looks for ways to assist his team and persistently works with his manager to implement ideas.
Location: College of Medicine | Department of Anesthesiology
Martin continually goes above and beyond his assigned duties as well as maintains several outside pursuits. Martin is active in the Department Wellness Program; he co-leads the monthly trivia group, he is the creator of the Department Chess group, and he leads one of the Department’s Walking Challenge teams. He develops the trivia questions and spends his own money on prizes. Martin has an unquenchable interest in science and research. He developed a protocol for a self-funded Beard Microbiome study, consulted with one of our senior faculty, submitted and received an approved IRB, and has fully enrolled study participants. Martin was also selected as one of UF’s Research Ambassadors and has co-hosted multiple Podcasts on Apple and Spotify, championing and discussing various topics related to research integrity.
Location: Business Affairs | Environmental Health and Safety
Since joining the Building Codes team in March 2021, Linda Patrick has been a valuable source of knowledge to many within her department. Linda immediately addressed her new responsibilities with enthusiasm, her excitement fueled by the construction of five major projects valued at almost $350 million dollars as well as hundreds of other small projects to address for permitting and review. Her responsibilities for the review process include verifying compliance of the documents with state law as well as technical reviews for compliance with the building code in the areas of mechanical, building, and life safety. She became the key person for assigning reviews and coordinating documentation changes. The responsibilities involved constant communication with architects, engineers, applicants and project managers in Planning, Design, and Construction, IFAS, Division of Housing and Resident Education, UF Health, Alachua County School Board (ACSB), and the University of North Florida (UNF).
Location: College of Veterinary Medicine
In the past year, Melissa Pett transitioned from her role as didactic curriculum manager to clinical curriculum manager. She managed all (more than 100) classroom and lab-based didactic courses in the curriculum, and all aspects of the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) student records (more than 500 current students and all alumni). She served as the liaison with the UF Disability Resource Center, assisting more than 100 students with learning and access barriers to ensure that they are succeeding academically and to establish testing and learning accommodations. During this role change, she managed both roles seamlessly and never allowed other job duties to suffer or fall behind. In addition to her depth of knowledge, Melissa is a strong advocate and ally for mental health and disabilities in the higher education space. She has adjusted the way that clinical accommodation details are distributed to clinical coordinators to eliminate excess email and information for ease of access. She handles all student crises with grace and empathy and ensures that every student is seen, valued, and respected. Her core values and service are critical to the overall student experience and our students recognize the importance of having a safe space to land when they are enduring difficulties in our rigorous curriculum.
Location: College of Medicine | Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology
Connie is a Grants Specialist in the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology and is currently responsible for 132 awards, representing $15.8 million in total costs annually. Connie’s responsibilities include handling the preparation of budgets, paperwork, and routing of all grant applications from her department. In addition, she handles a number of aspects of post-award management, including annual progress reports, tracking of compliance and changes to budgets. What makes Connie so critical is that she makes sure she understands the detailed requirements for each funding agency and how to navigate the applications through the University of Florida.
Location: Division of Student Life
Amanda is a Communications Specialist within the Division of Student Life, overseeing marketing and communications for Housing and Residence Life, Off Campus Life, the Reitz Union, Newell Hall and the Disability Resource Center. Traditionally, one of the responsibilities of a marketer is to update websites. On occasion, those sites require an upgrade and redesign as content becomes outdated and technologies and branding changes. For perspective, website redesigns at best should take 6-12 months to complete. Within the nomination period, Amanda has completed four. In fact, she created an entire project management system for the redesigns, a system that is now the department standard. Her newly developed system was so proficient that she was asked to lead the website redesign for an area outside her portfolio–one where she took five websites and melded them into one, all within two months.
Location: College of Public Health and Health Professions | Office of the Dean
Amy managed a massive workload with professionalism and a very clear interest in learning something she had never worked with. She not only cleaned up a system that had been neglected and made sure that requests were processed that had fallen through the cracks, she streamlined the process so that requests were handled in a more timely She worked through many issues and interacted with frustrated faculty and staff, managing and remediating all while developing professional and respectful relationships with faculty and staff she had never met. She often worked evening and weekends in order to keep up with her normal duties as her work days were filling up with research procurement. During this time, Amy was able to bring up several process concerns that we have been able to restructure and make the experience a little more manageable for our College. Without Amy’s dedication and willingness to go the extra mile during this time our research faculty would have struggled to keep things moving and there would have been a significant burden placed upon the already lean departmental staff. Over the years, Amy has consistently shown her dedication to PHHP.
Location: UF Professional and Workforce Development
Not only is Katie extremely capable, she is a consummate professional. She represents the University of Florida impeccably. No request is too much trouble. She is responsive to requests and completes tasks at all hours of the day and night. She brings a sense of optimism and positivity to every conversation. Whether working with her virtually or in person, she has a warm and engaging personality. She is responsible for budgets, managing expectations, and ensuring her team meets the terms and conditions of signed contracts. Katie willingly comes in at 6am and leaves at 8pm or later, and works holidays and weekends to satisfy the client’s needs or expectations. Due to her efforts, we were able to meet the needs and exceed expectations of our clients, resulting in generating over $800,000 in revenue. Without Katie at the helm, we would not have realized that revenue.
Location: College of Journalism & Communications | Department of Public Relations
The Department has benefited immensely from Isabella’s efforts! Her positive attitude and ability to be a team player makes for an enjoyable office environment. She is consistently looking for new ways to make the department more modern and to run smoothly and efficiently. The College and Department underwent many changes this past academic year and took on new projects. Bella played a critical role in the successful implementation of many of these initiatives. Bella worked closely with each search committee chair to organize schedules, arrange travel details, and coordinate interviews. All three searches occurred during the same semester, which meant many long nights and additional hours for Bella. She worked tirelessly to ensure there were no missed details and that each candidate had a pleasant experience. Since multiple searches happened at the same time, she was often balancing many things at once. She personally worked with each candidate to ensure all their needs were met, and they each thanked Bella and commented that their UF experience was wonderful because of her.
Location: IFAS | Family Youth & Community Sciences
Andres performed a number of critical actions in support of our proposal, including identifying and accessing sources of county-level data and creating a table that included county-level statistics for all 67 Florida counties; and analyzing data from the current contract to inform proposed deliverables and performance measures.
Location: Business Affairs | Environmental Health and Safety
Joel has made exceptional contributions to the Researcher Safety Department through his excellent hard work and dedication to enriching the lives of students and faculty around him. He has identified various programs that can be enhanced. For example, he streamlined the ordering of stickers, improving customer service in our department. Joel is truly special for his compassion and commitment to helping others and creating a safe environment in our labs. Joel has shown passion and determination to help others. He has not only completed his responsibilities with excellence, but he has gone above and beyond of what is expected of him through helping others and volunteering for special projects to improve the compliance with safety policies, plans, and procedures.
Location: College of Medicine | Department of Health Outcomes and Biomedical Informatics
Donald has effectively continued liaising with an increasing number (up to 13 from 10) of OneFlorida+ Clinical Research Network data partners to effectively onboard new teams, coordinate and communicate project needs, milestones, deliverables and ensuring data deadlines are met. He also liaises with 5 All of USS/SEEC data partners in support of a national NIH research initiative to ensure coordination and communicate project needs, milestones, deliverables and ensuring data deadlines are met. Donald has refined project planning and management of OneFlorida+ Data Trust Characterization work, which is the core backbone of a national clinical research initiative, with quarterly, contractual deliverables. He has broken down larger, nebulous tasks into smaller ones. This has made the work the team has to do more visible and the completion (or impediments) more transparent.
Location: College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | Facilities & Operations
Michael is responsible for the direction, coordination, and administration of building maintenance, renovations, construction, security, communications, property and space accountability, and emergency operations for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Michael is an amazing Facility & Operation Manager. On various occasions, Mr. Whelan has shown superior service to the department of Political Science. Not only has he responded in a timely manner, but made sure the department is kept up to date with the work that is being completed. Michael truly cares about the safety of the students, faculty and staff in each building that he manages. He goes above and beyond to make sure that everyone is out of harms way.
Location: College of Medicine | Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department
Teresa is an Administrative Support Assistant III, within the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department in the College of Medicine at UF. For the last year, her department has been in a state of flux, with the concurrent hiring of a new Chair and Director of Administrative Services. During the search processes to fill these key positions, Teresa has kept the Department functioning. Ms. White played a key role in successfully recruiting new graduate students in both Masters and Ph.D. programs. The department successfully recruited the target number of new students in each program in spite of the peak of COVID-19 cases during the recruitment season.
Location: College of Engineering | Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
As a Research Administrator I in the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Amy’s skills and dedication are exemplary for her department colleagues and UF research administrators. By volunteering to train new staff members despite being at a lower salary level and rank than the trainees, Amy set an example for service and humility that inspired other staff in the department. She helped to set and reinforce a culture of community support that we are proud to see across the department and is evident to others in the college. The dedication to making time for training allowed other members of the team to come up to speed as quickly as possible. This dramatically lessened the impact of the staff transition on the PIs who are served by the post-award team, helping to continue timely budget projections and preventing the buildup of corrections and cost transfers that typically occur during heavy periods of turnover or training.
Location: UF/IFAS Shared Service Center
Brittini Balch is the Interim Associate Director of the UF/IFAS Shared Services Center (SSC). The SSC supports more than 18 departments and some of the off-campus Research and Education Centers in UF/IFAS with their fiscal, human resources, and research grant support. Additionally, the SSC is currently understaffed by about 10-12 personnel due to the various systemic pressures in the post-covid era. Brittini has been the glue especially holding the SSC together since the Interim Director went on parental leave at the end of the 21-22 fiscal year.
Location: College of Medicine – Jacksonville | Pediatrics
Since Ms. Brown returned to UF in 2015, she has been an exemplary employee, who has continued to grow in her role and take on added responsibilities. In addition to administrative tasks related to student education, Ms. Brown also assisted students with nearly every aspect of their daily lives, including helping them to find housing, ensuring that they received appropriate health care when needed, and remaining a reliable contact for them whenever any questions arose. Ms. Brown has consistently received the highest praise from students, as well as from others involved in their educational experiences. Additionally, during the AY2021-2022, Ms. Brown was responsible for 1,292 student rotations, by far the most we have ever had. During this time, Ms. Brown was also able to maximize revenue to our programs. Through her efforts this year – ensuring the prompt payment of rotation fees for outside students – we were able to collect over $94,000 to help support our campus and enhance services for our students.
Location: UFIT | Infrastructure & Communication Technology
Nicholas has been moving UFIT from a support function to an innovation and discovery accelerator. Recently, he contributed to troubleshooting and resolving several issues highly impacting the university’s ability to conduct highly visible research projects in the hundreds of millions of dollars. He used his accumulated knowledge and expertise to consult for other research units, proposed new approaches to tackling the vast amount of data analysis using existing infrastructure, and worked weekends to build the transformative change that helped the university maintain its robust research portfolio and contracts. As a result, several research projects delivered their analyses and continue to prosper, and new projects are underway to utilize the power of UFIT infrastructure to boost scholarship and service to our communities.
Location: Housing & Residence Life
One of the biggest annual events in the Division of Student Life is move-in day for Housing moves in thousands of students in just a few short days into the 21 residence halls on campus. Karley is there at every step, leading the way and very clearly showing all the division team members why this is an important part of the student and family experience that we should all be contributing towards. Karley does this every year, but this past year has been a particular challenge as family and students had elevated levels of concern and worry over moving back after being away during COVID. 2021 saw a renewed enthusiasm for living on campus, and Karley helped promote the positivity of move-in with many team members across the division.
Location: Office of Student Financial Aid and Scholarships
Sharon is the Assistant Director of publications and social media in the Office of Student Financial Aid and Scholarships (SFA). In this role, Sharon manages all social media platforms for SFA, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Sharon also maintains the SFA home website, the central informational platform for all current and potential students to learn and understand the financial aid process. In addition, Sharon was instrumental in maintaining the AI chatbot, Alli, by consistently updating the program with financial aid-specific answers. Sharon has been diligent in serving on multiple committees to ensure that SFA receives relevant information about events across campus. Her ongoing work with the Levin College of Law to ensure Constitution Day Events are planned, for example, ensures we are able to continue to receive federal funding.
Location: UF Advancement
Jessica is the Assistant Director of Program Management at UF Advancement. She is UF Advancement’s “Wizard” and when someone has a question about data, reporting, projections, or special projects, they go directly to her. Not only does Jessica correct any issues that arise, but she also digs in to find out why something happened so she can explain to ensure it does not happen again, or she works with colleagues to remedy any breaks in processes. Jessica created a uniformed template and reporting with each of our 13 mini campaign priorities. This includes a standardized meeting structure, reporting, one-pager providing progress to date. A dashboard that recaps this information at the highest level for use by both Advancement Leadership and campus partners.
Location: College of Medicine
Ms. Green, is director of the College of Medicine’s Office of Educational Quality Improvement and Accreditation (OEQIA) and works closely daily with both the Senior Associate Dean for Medical Education and Assistant Dean for EQIA in the COM. Her primary responsibilities are to provide leadership and administrative support to the OEQIA and faculty in the development and delivery of the COM’s educational programs that include medical student, graduate student and physician assistant students. In addition, Ms. Green has stepped forward and assumed additional responsibilities providing administrative support to the College of Medicine Academic Status Committee (ASC), Dean’s Advisory Committee on student appeals, and coordination of student appeals with the University Office of Student Affairs, University General Counsel, and outside agencies such as the State of Florida’s Professional Resource Network (PRN).
Location: Office of Undergraduate Affairs
Casey is the main point of interaction between faculty members submitting requests to the University Curriculum Committee (UCC) and the General Education Committee (GEC). This interaction can be stressful as faculty members rush to prepare their proposals for committee votes. In the last year, Casey has made this process less stressful for faculty members by working with them to address specific committee concerns. Casey has worked with faculty to get 22 new Quest courses approved. In AY2021-2022, with Casey’s assistance, the GEC reviewed 50 General Education courses. Offering these new Quest courses will help with new student registration and create vital connections between UF faculty and students in smaller classroom settings.
Location: College of Veterinary Medicine
Rachel is the Assistant Director for CVM Careers and independently operates and manages the direction, administration, and promotion of experience and employment connections for DVM students within UF’s College of Veterinary Medicine. With strong industry connections, this role acts as a liaison between students and industry while providing students with job search tools and tips, career resources, and how to engage with employers. Additionally, this role annually spearheads and hosts CVM Career Day and strategically plans and delivers co-curriculum professional development programming to complement their didactic and clinical education.
Location: College of Agricultural and Life Sciences
Dr. Larson is the Director of the Center for Online Learning and Technology (COLT) in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. Barbra has the responsibility to lead a five-person team in addition to student workers. COLT’s mission is to provide instructional design support for teaching and extension faculty in IFAS. Dr. Larson and her staff help IFAS faculty, including UF/IFAS Extension educators, to develop courses and training materials for online delivery of education and training of extension clients, stakeholders, and agents in Florida and beyond.
Location: Office of Student Financial Aid and Scholarships
Jordan is the Assistant Director of Scholarships and State Programs in the Office of Student Financial Aid and Scholarships. In this role, she has managed and overseen multiple State Programs, which include Florida Bright Futures, the Benacquisto Scholarship Program, and the Florida Student Assistant Grant for the past two years. Jordan also manages and maintains the Machen Florida Opportunity Scholarship (MFOS). Jordan is responsible for completing an annual or biennial compliance audit with the state of Florida auditors. Under Jordan’s leadership, the State Programs area successfully passed, with no findings or comments.
Location: Center for Latin American Studies
Jessica made two exceptional contributions to the Center for Latin American Studies between August 2021 and July 2022. First, she worked to change our staff culture from fear and anxiety about the future to cooperation and collegiality. Secondly, she was instrumental in drafting two successful proposals to the Department of Education that procured about $2M dollars for four years. Jessica’s ability to communicate with the Center’s Director and advocacy has brought a significant shift in the overall philosophy of how staff are viewed and valued.
Location: Strategic Communications and Marketing
Ana was hired into a newly created role as Associate Director of Digital Marketing with the charge of developing a new front door for the UF homepage – the first one in seven years. With that incredible challenge ahead of her, she has also presented and instituted innovative digital solutions to improve the university’s reputation among peers while helping her team be seen as the experts on campus in this area. She worked tirelessly with the web services team, the web agency, and web strategy committee leading to the launch of the new site, which beautifully dovetailed with the new Momentum brand platform. This core and foundational work is important because it is the front door to the University of Florida in the digital space.
Location: College of Dentistry
Karen is the Director of Communications and is excellent at her communications responsibilities–entailing PR, marketing initiatives, publications, digital communications like website, social media and digital display messaging at the college, media relations, internal communications on behalf of Dean Isabel Garcia & collaboration with alumni and development on fundraising and alumni affairs communications. By tenure and nature, she is the leader-of-the-pack among the six UF Health college communicators and she is admired for looking out and sharing crucial information that benefits all the colleges–sometimes under embargo and in advance–to help everyone adequately prepare for large announcements.
Location: RecSports
Stef has developed a plan to enhance the employee life cycle at the Department of Recreational Sports. From recruitment to on-boarding and training to transitioning and off-boarding, Stef has insured that every employee understands their value at Recreational Sports and feels supported int their development through their tenure.
Location: Office of the Provost | Teaching and Technology
In his role as Associate Director of Operations at UF Online, Nico builds partnership to achieve results and brings innovative ideas to life. Nico has brought innovation and energy to the program, leading the marketing, finance, data analytics, and strategic partnership teams. Nico seeks to streamline operations wherever possible, with efficiency and responsible fund management always top of mind. An accomplished lecturer as well, Nico uses his skills as a teacher in his interactions, thoughtfully guiding his team members and sharing his extensive knowledge of all aspects of higher education. He helped build and launch the Gator Pathways program, an innovative network of pathways for potential students to become part of the Gator Nation.
Location: College of Public Health and Health Professions
Since the day she started as Assistant Director of Administrative Services, Jenna has embodied the philosophy of servant leadership, meaning that she places a primary emphasis on the well-being of those being served. She prioritizes the needs of the department above all else and has been diligent about addressing pain points in order to improve processes for the benefit of administrators, faculty, staff and students. She is inclusive in her approach and really aims to understand issues, thinking of them from all angles to find sustainable solutions to problems. She has made numerous positive changes in the department, and her colleagues are excited to see what else she is able to accomplish moving forward.
Location: College of Pharmacy
Matt is the College of Pharmacy’s Director of Communications, where he leads all external business and marketing communications, as well as the College of Pharmacy website. Matt was critical in synthesizing and presenting the data which helped earn the College of Pharmacy a 2021 and a 2022 Health Professions Higher Education in Diversity, or HEED, Award. Most recently, Matt has increased his production by the creation of and timely delivery of our e-newsletters: an external, quarterly message to our alumni, donors and friends, and a monthly memo to our internal stakeholders. Matt delivers far more in-depth research stories than his peers, and he seeks out and writes extremely creative stories regarding donors, alumni, students and more.
Location: Institute for Child Health Policy
Yijun leads a variety of data elaboration, management, modelling, and analysis projects that feed directly into policymaking and policy evaluation and quality control, with direct impacts on policy and on the health care of vulnerable Texas Medicaid beneficiaries. Some of her major and most impactful contributions include leading the calculation and operationalization of the metric for Potentially Preventable Events (PPE) and the Chronic Illness and Disability Payment System (CDPS) diagnostic-based risk adjustment model for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC). The fact that Yijun is trusted to take primary responsibility for such a high-profile task of great financial consequence is testimony to the high esteem in which she is held and her unquestioned trustworthiness.
Location: IFAS | Department of Animal Sciences
John Bromfield is absolutely dedicated to his research, his students, the department and university, and his scientific discipline. He is already a leader in his department and discipline. He leads an internationally recognized research program in understanding the impact of uterine disease in mammals. This research is particularly important for dairy cattle production because of the high incidence of uterine diseases and the negative, long-term impact of uterine disease on cow fertility. He serves as the Director of the Animal Molecular and Cellular Biology Graduate Program. This is a time-consuming commitment that involves activities of about 15 faculty in several departments across campus directing graduate programs of approximately 10-15 Ph.D. and 5-10 M.S. students.
Location: IFAS | Indian River Research and Education Center
Liliana Cano emerged quietly as a world-renowned plant pathologist. The number of scientists throughout the world who access her work and cite her work in their own investigations is now staggering. Dr. Liliana Cano’s appointment with UF/IFAS at the Indian River Research and Education Center is for research and teaching. She is not responsible for an Extension appointment, yet she is willing to assist homeowners with a plant disease. Dr. Cano works with a University of California-Riverside plant breeder on a grant to improve avocado plant pathogen resistance. Additionally, she accepted another grant to study greasy spot, a disease of citrus. This point is made to show that Dr. Cano’s many projects and involvement greatly exceed expectations for an assistant professor.
Location: College of the Arts | School of Music
In her capacity as Lecturer for the Musicology area in the School of Music, Laura has demonstrated an amazing capacity for thoughtful scholarship and mentorship, an ability to critically assess what is best needed for the students as well as the area and invigorate everyone with whom she works. Due to the nature of Laura’s position as Lecturer, she interfaces every year with the entirety of our undergraduate population at the School of Music through the undergraduate music history curriculum. Laura’s through first-hand knowledge of our previous curriculum and the students’ needs along with her pedagogical knowledge made the process of revising the curriculum incredibly straightforward.
Location: College of Dentistry | Community Dentistry & Behavior Science
On many weekends you will find her giving her time to community health fairs, free dental clinics such as R.A.M. (Rural Area Medical) and FreeDOM Clinic, where she instructs students or provides dental treatment to underserved populations. FreeDOM Clinic provides free dental, optical, and medical care for the uninsured and underinsured. Their mission is to bring health, hope and healing to people in need. In addition to this, Dr. Olga stepped in to take direct responsibility for the outreach dental program that is run out of our NCEF Pediatric Dentistry Residency program in Naples. Through funding from the Naples Children’s Education Foundation (NCEF), the community outreach program provides dental screening and preventive care to children and adolescents in Collier County including those living in Immokalee, a community with a high concentration of seasonal farm workers and their families.
Location: UF Counseling and Wellness Center
Dr. Escoto has many levels of daily duties yet still manages to think globally for not just CWC Faculty & Staff, but for the entire UF community of faculty, staff, and most importantly, our UF students. He demonstrates supportive leadership and expresses creativity in always remaining open to new ideas and innovation towards UF mental health business and treatment models. Dr. Escoto has put in great effort in establishing, maintaining, & advocating for our CWC Consultation & Referral Team (CART), which consists of a specialized team of counseling professionals tasked with providing mental health consultation services, urgent/emergent counseling, and referral and connection to resources.
Location: IFAS | Department of Plant Pathology
Jose Huguet-Tapia is currently a research scientist at the Department of Plant Pathology. Jose has contributed exemplary scientific research in the cutting-edge area of genomics and bioinformatics. Dr. Huguet-Tapia has been a co-principal investigator on multiple research grants, including those funded by USDA-NIFA and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Fitting his research expertise, he has been an ad-hoc reviewer for several research journals including Crop Science, Scientific Reports, and Molecular Genetics and Genomics. Beyond his research appointment, Dr. Huguet-Tapia taught courses for graduate students and helped and trained several researchers in genome analyses. He has also provided training workshops to attendees of annual meetings of a professional society.
Location: College of Public Health and Health Professions | Department of Clinical & Health Psychology
Lisa King has led one of the best Dialectical Therapy Program in the southeast for the past 7 years. Her program teaches lifesaving skills to severely mentally ill adults and adolescents. Her outcome data and patient satisfaction data document the significant difference Dr. King has made in their lives. Dr. King has also taught these skills to her mental health counselors and graduate students, as the lead instructor of the Advanced Therapy Course. Her exceptional management and organizational skills have facilitated over $4M dollars in collections in the clinic. Dr. King has taken on the tedious tasks of working with UF Health and State of Florida administrators to optimize Psychology’s Specialty Clinic’s participation within the changing Medicare and Medicaid programs.
Location: College of Medicine – Jacksonville | Neurology
Dr. Suparna Krishnaiengar has provided UF Health Jacksonville with multifaceted services throughout her years of employment. Dr. Krishnaiengar serves as a faculty in the department of Neurology with subspecialty training in Epilepsy. With clinical duties being her major assignment, Dr. Krishaniengar has been looking for ways to develop programs for epilepsy patients. She has been instrumental in developing a multidisciplinary specialty clinic for pregnant women with epilepsy. This clinic is the first-of-its-kind in North Florida and one of only a few nation-wide and provides services to an underrepresented population. Despite launching this clinic only a few months ago, the reception of patients has been beyond expectation due to the previously unmet need.
Location: College of Design, Construction, and Planning
As Interim Department Chair, Dan Manley went above and beyond his stated duties and responsibilities of running the Department of Landscape Architecture. With careful consideration and planning, the faculty worked to change the bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture from a 5-year to a 4-year program, to create a more advantageous and accessible program for students while maintaining the quality of education and training that the program is known for. Dan’s professional practice roots have been key to balancing out the student experience – as his real-world experience helps ground ideas and design parameters to build skills for future professional success of his students.
Location: UF Health | Hospital Medicine
Nila is a clinician that cares for many of the most complex patients with areas of specialization being perioperative evaluation, quality/patient safety, and co‐management with other services. Her clinical acumen combined with her leadership skills in the clinical area have led to numerous leadership positions, including Medical Director. Upon her arrival, there were 16 Hospitalist Faculty. In the ensuing years, Nila has grown the division to 50 Hospitalists. In November 2017, her administrative skills were recognized by the Department of Medicine, College of Medicine when she was appointed Division Chief for Hospital Medicine.
Location: Counseling & Wellness Center
Kristen’s kindness and compassion is shown when attending to the needs of all people she meets. She connects with students and parents seeking service for their student and makes them feel cared about and at ease. On top of that, Kristen takes time to share her talents and gifts outside UF through volunteering in the larger community. In the summer of 2021, Kristen completed Crisis Center Phone Counselor Training at the Alachua County Crisis Center. The overall extent which Kristen goes to each day to care for everyone she meets is very honorable and she is bound to make an incredible impact in the community along with helping people improve their lives in a positive manner.
Location: College of Public Health & Health Professions | Occupational Therapy
Since taking on the role of lead faculty advisor for the student-run Occupational Therapy Equal Access Clinic (OT-EAC), Dr. Galloway has facilitated student development of professional skills related to OT practice. She identified strengths and weaknesses related to the logistics of the student board and helped rework the board positions to be more equitable in responsibilities in order to create sustainability. She guided the students through the creation of protocols related to clinic operations and improved client care by increasing the standards of quality in order to address health disparity within the Gainesville community. From her extensive clinical experience, she developed new guidelines for documentation within this clinic to meet the students’ evolving knowledge developed within the OT doctoral curriculum. Since adopting Dr. Galloway’s changes, the OT-EAC has increased their ability to schedule appointments by 200% since they are now providing both telehealth and on-site services from one location. They have also increased their fundraising by 80%, which has resulted in improved ability to purchase and distribute needed adapted equipment to clients.
Location: UF Health Jacksonville
Aside from her role as a Histotechnologist at UF Health Jacksonville, Nicole has been working in clinical outreach for almost 2 years non-stop. Whether it be helping people, animals or picking up trash, nothing or no event is beneath her. With all she has done with community outreach, representing UF, and creating her own community events, she has definitely show she has a heart to serve. She has a good character and willingness to help others. She loves helping her community whether it be people, pets or just making Jacksonville a better place to live.
Location: College of Liberal Arts & Sciences | Center for African Studies
As the Outreach Director for the Center of African Studies, Dr. Leslie was a key factor in establishing honors African and African-American History classes at all local Alachua County high schools and making sure they not only survived, but thrived. It is rare that such a distinguished professor can go into K-12 classrooms at multiple schools and be recognized and respected by hundreds of kids in the community. With over 20 years doing this work, her mentorship, collaboration, and community partnership continues to make a difference for thousands of kids and educators.
Location: University Police Department
Officer Pratt is the epitome of crime prevention. Since joining the University Police Department in 1995, she has gone above and beyond with her dedication to crime prevention not only on the University campus but in the surrounding community. Officer Pratt is an instructor of several reduction areas, including RAD, radKids, S.A.F.E, and a lead instructor of UFPD’s Community Police Academy. The numerous programs taught by Officer Pratt have impacted the lives of thousands of students and families in Gainesville. Besides teaching these programs on the college campus, Officer Pratt represents UPD well and teaches the same programs to another program close to her heart, the Special Olympics. She makes it a point to teach kids with disabilities that no obstacle is in their way of success.
Location: P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School
Carla-Ann puts into practice diversity and inclusion elements in all aspects of her work as a scholar, teacher, and colleague. As a classroom teacher, her middle grades classes are always forward thinking and include difficult conversations. She teaches her students how to approach these conversations with dignity, respect, and integrity. As a colleague, Carla-Ann has assisted in moving the P.K. Yonge faculty by serving as a leader of the Racial Equity Council, the Faculty Hiring of Color committee, and being an active representative on both Faculty Policy Council and the School Advisory Council. She is passionate about the work being done in this field and brings this enthusiasm to her students and colleagues.
Location: IFAS North Florida Research & Education Center Marianna
Mr. Gomillion knows and understands how far many of our international scholars, graduate students, post-doctoral associates and faculty are from our country and seeks to bridge that gap by generating opportunities for cultural exchanges. He has implemented the yearly International Luncheon, in which international scholars, students, staff and faculty can prepare dishes from their country and share with the NFREC community. Additionally, Mr. Gomillion has created English lectures, classes designed by him that cover both day-to-day conversation and agricultural terms. He has created a creative, trusting and diverse environment in which he also shares aspects of American culture and the scholars share cultural information about their country and traditions.
Location: UF IT | Center for Instructional Technology & Training
Since Laura joined CITT five years ago, she has made accessibility, equity, and inclusion a priority by developing resources, services, and initiatives that promote a more accessible and inclusive teaching and learning environment. Laura co-created a Teaching for Inclusivity and Accessibility Certificate of Completion series that had more than 200 registrants during this nomination period. In addition to this training series, Laura helped lead the development of Accessibility Basics and Accessibility Fundamentals, two self-paced trainings that have approximately 200 participants from UF and beyond. In September 2021, she also helped launch a new service that enables instructors to gain assistance in remediating accessibility issues in their digital content through accessibility consultations.
Location: Counseling & Wellness Center
Dr. Wang has been a resource for his colleagues when they have encountered challenging situations and he has helped with ethical decision making and finding culturally specific resources. A huge contribution that Dr. Wang provided in the area of Crisis Intervention is that he facilitated an outreach entitled: QPR (Question, Persuade and Refer) Suicide Prevention Training. This training he provided is above and beyond his job requirements and is a 1.5 hour interactive presentation incorporating the basic QPR core curriculum. The course covers myths regarding suicide, warning signs, and how to inquire about suicides. The course also includes an opportunity for questions and discussion. This training is available to faculty, staff, students, and organizations across the University of Florida campus, and includes considerations of Diversity and Inclusion that Dr. Wang integrated throughout.
