2020 Provost’s Unit Awards for Excellence Announced

The Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost has recognized six outstanding staff members as winners of the 2020 Provost’s Unit Awards for Excellence.

The University Awards for Excellence represent NC State’s highest honor for non-faculty members. Each nominee demonstrated excellence in one of the following areas: customer service, efficiency and innovation, human relations, outstanding state government service, public service, heroism, and the spirit of North Carolina.

This year’s recipients of the Provost’s Unit Awards for Excellence are:

• Robert Chapman, lead technician, facility support, McKimmon Conference and Training Center
• Customer Service

Chapman consistently goes above and beyond in providing AV support for the 200+ programs that McKimmon Conference and Training Center runs annually. He cares about end product success and does whatever he can to make that happen. These are some of the ways he contributes beyond his job description: he proactively communicates with instructors and staff, makes suggestions to streamline AV, is always calm when a AV hiccup occurs because of an obvious human error, and demonstrates seemingly endless patience. 

• Alison Edwards, university library specialist, the NC State University Libraries
• Outstanding State Government Service

From her work in the classroom helping students start on their first research assignments, her role as supervisor and mentor to dozens of student employees, and her advocacy for open pedagogy, Edwards places students front and center in her daily work. She guest lectures to more than 50 classes per semester. She is on the Libraries’ Alt-Textbook team, and has worked with several faculty members who are interested in reducing textbook-related fees for their students, helping them create or identify high-quality, fee-free course materials. Edwards has also taken a lead role in developing the Libraries Open Pedagogy Incubator, a semester-long program designed to incentivize faculty to go beyond the first step in open education — adopting open course materials — to implement multiple open-enabled practices in their courses. Additionally, she is working with the Office of Faculty Development to adapt the Open Incubator curriculum into online modules for the Office of Faculty Development’s Red Core Teaching Certificate. 

• Katharine Frazier, university library technician, the NC State University Libraries
• Efficiency and Innovation

Frazier has been an outstanding colleague and contributor to the work of her department and the Libraries. She was recently named a University Library Fellow, and will be appointed for a two-year term as a member of the library faculty, combining an assignment on an initiative of strategic importance with an appointment in a home department. The NCSU Libraries Fellows Program develops future leaders for academic libraries, with a focus on science, engineering, and digital librarianship, on diversity, and on library management. Working in the Collections and Research Strategy department, she helps develop a responsive research collection by monitoring local, national, and international collections news and trends in areas including open access models, transformative journal licensing, and inclusive collections. She also supports collection management activities by managing Demand-Driven Acquisition and Books-By-Request programs and purchasing student and faculty monograph requests. In just over a year, she has taught herself programming skills and applied them to develop technical solutions to create significant efficiencies for Libraries’ projects and day-to-day work. She takes the initiative to recognize opportunities to solve problems.

• David Howard, director, Instructional Innovation Services, NC State DELTA
• Efficiency and Innovation

Since joining DELTA in August 2002, Howard has worked tirelessly to create a culture of innovation in DELTA, building a team of highly talented communication, media and instructional design experts that have continued to move the needle in innovative digital learning. From novel mobile apps to award winning virtual reality experiences (for example, the Cultural Competencies Virtual Reality experience, a national Campus Tech winner), Howard’s team creates learning objects in an environment where innovation and experimentation are encouraged, allowing creativity to flourish. While recognizing his overall contribution to DELTA as an innovative leader and a caring manager, his long-term advocacy for reducing student course costs and his work over the past two years in the Open Educational Resources space is quite noteworthy. He is a true champion and driver for the pursuit of open and low-cost course materials on NC State’s campus.

• Elizabeth James, director, Office of International Services, Office of Global Engagement
• Safety and Heroism

How we respond to emergencies as individuals and organizations is very much influenced by our culture. NC State’s global community encounters new and unforeseen circumstances every day that each require unique responses and considerations. The ability to timely implement communications and protocols to reach and assist individuals from a variety of cultural backgrounds is an invaluable skill that the director of an international office must have to lead her unit and the populations it serves safely through an emergency. James has demonstrated this quality during numerous emergencies in her seven-year tenure as director of the Office of International Services (OIS). Without doubt, her meritorious actions and decisions demonstrate outstanding judgement and serve to prevent personal injury and property damage of international students and scholars at NC State.

Not only does she demonstrate excellent judgement and quick thinking in the face of unexpected events, she also takes preventative action to ensure safety and well-being during anticipated events. In fall 2018, the university braced for the landfall of Hurricane Florence. Recognizing that many international students and scholars were unfamiliar with this type of natural disaster and lacked established support networks, James acted quickly to organize a communication plan to address the most important needs of this unique population prior to the arrival of the storm. Even while the university was closed and her staff was remotely scattered, she guided OIS to provide practical and frequent messaging which ultimately mitigated the storm’s impact and alleviated fear and anxiety for a population which had little experience in such an emergency.

• Charlene Pettiway, technology support technician, Academic Technology Innovation, NC State DELTA
• Customer Service

Pettiway joined DELTA in July 2014 and since then has consistently performed at a high level providing instructional technology support to NC State faculty as they integrate an array of technologies into their teaching practice. She has successfully resolved more than 4,000 help calls and is one of two DELTA consultants who work with faculty during extended help desk hours. When interacting with instructors, she demonstrates strong product knowledge and unparalleled professionalism. 

Pettiway receives very high ratings from DELTA users on a consistent basis. As part of a monthly internal awards program, the help desk staff with the highest average customer satisfaction ratings are recognized with a gold, silver, or bronze badge. Since December 2016 when DELTA introduced these badges, she has earned 22 of them, which is the most of anyone on the team. An additional level of recognition, called “LearnTech Elite,” is given when team members receive a perfect rating across all of their feedback surveys in a given month. Pettiway has received the LearnTech Elite award a remarkable three times. 

Each winner will receive  eight hours of paid leave, an engraved plaque and a check for $250. They will now move forward for consideration for the university-wide Awards for Excellence.

Certificates were given to all 14 nominees:

• Clément Bordas, associate director of web development and user experience, Enrollment Management and Services
• Jonathan Brewster, director, NC State Japan Center, Office of Global Engagement
• Carmen Dunn, executive event manager, McKimmon Conference and Training Center
• Arthur Earnest, IT instructional/class support, NC State DELTA
• Hayley Gallagher, business officer, Office for Institutional Equity and Diversity
• Belen Gebremichael, Graduate School liaison, Graduate School
• Laurie Gyalog, lead project manager, NC State DELTA
• Grace Kavanaugh, administrative support associate, Office of Global Engagement
• Lisa LaBarbera-Mascote, director, NC State Women’s Center, Office for Institutional Equity and Diversity
• Lauren Liston, admissions CRM specialist, Graduate School
• Morgan Middleton, assistant director of scholarships and financial aid, Enrollment Management and Services
• Amy Neaves, senior faculty development specialist, Office of Faculty Development
• Kim Priebe, director, Study Abroad Office, Office of Global Engagement
• Carl Thomas, human resources manager, Office of Global Engagement