November - Mellanie Gilroy

Our first awardee to receive a second monthly award is Mellanie Gilroy from Chemistry. In the past month six new nominations emphasized her performance in this Fall's Colloquium Seminar Series. As her nominations say, "I am in charge of arranging our Departmental Colloquium Seminar Series for the year of 2003 and have been working with Mellanie closely. She has helped me successfully invite a group of internationally known scientists from USA as well as other country. These scientists will not only bring novel ideas and information to UNL but also certainly make UNL known better to the outside world... She has developed a truely impressive manner in dealing with faculty and guests... When we needed assistance this year with Chemistry Day, our annual on-campus undergraduate recruitment event, Mellanie quickly volunteered to give up her Saturday and was invaluable that day, ensuring that the day ran smoothly and that our guests had both an enjoyable and educational experience...

"Mellanie embodies customer service. She is willing to help anyone, staff, faculty or students who ask for her help, even if the request is "not her job." ... She has averted several diplomatic disasters by stepping into the breech and smoothing the waters... Mellanie's willingness to go above and beyond became evident again this summer and fall when the chair's assistant missed a great deal of work... Mellanie once again stepped up to make sure that the essential work of the department was carried out... Mellanie has a fierce dedication to the mission of the institution, and is a vital contributor to the smooth operation of the Chemistry Department..."

October - Karen (Caruso) Kersten

Our Applause for October goes out to Karen (Caruso) Kersten . One nomination for Karen was only two words but these two words can sum up the four other nominations received... "Nice website!" [referring to the College website which is Karen's work]. But the nominations continue "As Web designer for the College of Arts & Sciences, Karen has worked tirelessly to provide a Web site our college can be proud of. Few people realize the time, effort and organizational skills needed to maintain a site of this magnitude. An incredible array of text, photos and links must be woven in both a logical and user-friendly manner. No easy task. This challenge, however, is something Karen takes on with flair. In addition, Karen's Web artistry has enhanced several departmental and special conference Web sites...

"Karen has spent many hours designing web pages and updating web pages for the College as well as other departments within the college. She does an outstanding job of making these web pages attractive and user friendly. She is always wanting input and takes your ideas or needs and makes them happen... She also created an Access database with billing information that can pull needed info at the end of the month in a format that can easily be used for billing..."

Finally, it is fitting that Karen received "the first real nomination from the new nomination form connected to the Applause website... Although the form was one brainstorm of an adhoc group of creative people here in the College, the creative work to develop this form was Karen's alone. It really isn't so simple to take information from a web page and email it. Karen took pains to make it happen quickly and at no expense. She was also very forthright about what could NOT be done in addition to the form - a requirement if we were to make this improvement happen quickly and at no expense. Thank you Karen."

September - Cathy Oslzly

Our Applause for September goes out to Cathy Oslzly in the Department of Psychology. As the nominations say, "Cathy Oslzly has worked at UNL for more than 25 years. For much of that time she has served as the Undergraduate adviser in the Department of Psychology. This job involves a tremendous amount of responsibility. We have several hundred Psychology majors, each of whom depends on her for academic advising and guidance. It would be hard to even estimate the number of students Cathy meets with over the course of a semester, but I suspect it is in the hundreds. Cathy's contributions go beyond her knowledge of academic requirements, which is extensive, by the way. She also takes a personal interest in many of the students she works with, getting to know them and their interests so she can serve as a better mentor to them...

"As part of her job as adviser, she team teaches a class, Psychology 100-Careers in Psychology, which really serves as an advising vehicle. Students meet together as a large group once a week for a one hour lecture. Cathy is responsible for providing the students with information concerning requirments for the major, their minors, and ES and IS courses. In addition, she is responsible for providing guest lecturers for the class (those who come and speak about different career options and volunteer opportunities in the community)... In addition to the class, Cathy meets individually with students (probably close to 40 students a week)..those who are brand new to the university, those who are new majors, and those who are in high school and thinking about attending the University. We like to think of Cathy as our "ambassador". She is the person students are likely to meet first and the one they continue to seek out when in need of advice. I have heard numerous students refer to Cathy as their "mother away from home". All one has to do is walk by her office and one can see what a valuable asset she is to our department. Her office is the "hub" of undergraduate activity and she is always available to meet the students and help them with any and all of their needs..both personal and academic. Cathy is an indispensable member of our department and we all greatly appreciate the work she does."

August - Mellanie Gilroy

Our Applause for August goes out to Mellanie Gilroy in the Department of Chemistry. As her nominations say, "Mellanie has ... very quickly became a valued employee. She is friendly, outgoing and a terrific representative of the Dept. of Chemistry. She has become the Administrative Assistant's right hand and assumes many of the AAs responsibilities when absent. Mellanie is an employee you can count on to go above and beyond the call, she can handle many different tasks simultaneously and never appears flustered or frustrated. She is willing to stay late if a given project needs to be completed and never complains. Her attendance record is excellent. She has an outstanding rapport not only with her fellow staff members but with the faculty and graduate students. Every department should be so fortunate to have a Mellanie on their staff...
"What stands out the most about Mellanie and the many jobs that she does, is that she does the work for others in their abscence, as well as her own. A supervisor may be gone for several weeks at a time. Mellanie runs the show during her absence in a cheerful manner. It is an extraordinary service that she provides. Mellanie is also the one that makes me laugh (really hard) each and every day. Everyone needs a Mellanie as a co-worker. Her professionalism is top-notch. As the colloquium coordinator she arranges the schedules for important dignitaries and represents our department the most positive light."

July - Joleen Deats

Our Applause for July goes out to Joleen Deats in Sociology. As her nominations say, "She is the 'go to' person who knows the right people at the University to contact to get things done... her responsibilities have expanded over the years to include: maintaining and monitoring our budgets; assisting the chair in preparing class schedules and scheduling classrooms; completing all PAFs and PDFs on faculty, graduate assistants, staff, and student workers; handling travel authorizations and expense vouchers; handling purchasing of equipment for the department; working with the chair and graduate chair in preparing various reports; keeping up-to-date with the specialized knowledge required to perform her job...

"If a department is to run smoothly, efficiently, and good morale is to be maintained, it needs a source of stability. For the last twenty years, Joleen Deats has fulfilled that critical function for the Department of Sociology. Throughout all of the changes, Joleen has remained courteous, cheerful, and dependable as she has effectively coordinated activities and dealt with the various tasks, deadlines, and interruptions. She is admired, liked, appreciated, and respected by faculty, staff, and students alike. In short, Joleen has been a stabilizing force. Rather than resisting change, she has embraced it and played a major role in using the changes to make us a stronger and even more effective department...

"it is very apparent that Joleen loves her work. Not only does she carry out her duties competently, but she does so enthusiastically! Indeed, she is the HEART of our department! Joleen has made many contributions to our department--with long hours (and years) of dedicated service to the faculty and graduate students--she is a beautiful example of professionalism coupled with compassion!...

"The first day I walked into this unfamiliar department Jolene was the capable, friendly person who readily helped me to find the room and the professor that I sought. This encounter was to be a metaphor for my entire experience with Jolene who has professionally and cheerfully guided me through the maze of graduate school challenges over the years...
"when I first began my graduate career I lived in Omaha. On one occasion, she phoned me about a form I was unaware of that needed filing that day. Rather than have me drive down to Lincoln to file it, she offered (note that I did not ask her - she volunteered!) to walk it over to administration herself...

"Something as simple as a smile meant so much for I was scared and confused about what graduate school at UNL would have in store for me. Joleen has never stopped smiling in the past three years ..."

June - Donette Petersen

Our Applause for June goes out to Donette Petersen in the Department of Philosophy. As her nominations state, "She is a dedicated employee who has been an indispensable part of this Department. for fifteen years. Everyone here depends on Donette's helpful, friendly and knowledgeable expertise for just about all of the business functions within the Department...
"She is an excellent, attentive, and very able office manager, the crucial core of the philosophy department. She keeps her eye on everything important to the good functioning of the department, and takes care of it herself or makes sure that the relevant people are prodded to do so. She works extremely well without close supervision. She is intelligent and able, and gets everything done well and on time. This is crucial in a department whose chair lives in another state... With her in place, the department virtually runs itself... She is very quick to independently identify any problems on the horizon... For instance, she has a number of times been the first person in the college to identify a difficulty created by some memo or change in policy, for instance recently the change in the tuition remission structure for GTAs. She is always very alert to all relevantly changing conditions, and very intelligent about what changes create what potential difficulties. She understands the operations of the department and its interaction with the university in a virtually complete and certainly a crucial manner. She is an excellent money manager, and makes absolutely sure we are always well within budget... She and the rest of the staff also provide a crucial nexus of interaction with the graduate and undergraduate students, to make them feel always at home. She identifies with the department and its interest in a way that could not be improved upon. We are extremely fortunate to have Donette with us here at UNL."

May - Helen Sexton

Our Applause for May goes out to Helen Sexton. As her nominations state, "Helen is currently Staff Assistant I in the Department of Political Science where
she has worked since 1985. She has been at UNL for just short of 30 years.

"Helen is extremely competent, managing the myriad tasks involved with running a good-sized department with its diverse personalities, budget constraints, large graduate program, scheduling demands, and thousands of undergraduates. She is always able to get the job done... She never complains and instead tackles her many assignments with alacrity and amazing good cheer.

"What makes Helen truly deserving of an applause award, however, is not merely her competence in dealing with all these tasks but rather the little things she does-things which, of course, turn out to be not so little. Helen is the social hub of the Department. She knows when graduate students or others are in need of assistance and she is able and willing either to provide that assistance or to mention the problem to those who can help. She has an incredible knack for reading people and she is wonderfully empathetic. She buys treats when graduate students are taking their comprehensive exams, she organizes departmental parties and functions, she cheers up people when they are down, and in innumerable other ways goes the extra mile in making the Department a pleasant place to spend time. It is not hyperbole to say-and I know I speak for all my colleagues on this point-that it is impossible to imagine the department without her. Helen has become that indispensable...

"With all of the demands on Helen's time -- and the faculty invariably go to Helen when they need work done -- she is tremendously polite and cheerful. Which brings me to another aspect of Helen's presence in the department: Helen does her daily work extremely well, but she also is the person who makes the political science department such a nice place to work. Helen brings treats for graduate students when they are taking comprehensive exams. She always remembers birthdays. She goes out of her way to help people, especially faculty and graduate students who are new to Lincoln or who truly need help... When someone is in need, Helen is always there. She cares deeply about the department, the faculty and the graduate students. We cannot begin to show Helen how much we appreciate what she does for the department, but winning the Applause award would be a start."

April - Marilyn Johnson

Our Applause for April goes out to Marilyn Johnson in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. As her SEVEN nominations state "Marilyn Johnson (formerly Lammers) has done a wonderful job keeping our graduate program up and running. While her job description officially assigns only 50% of her time to the graduate program, she has done more than one could expect from a full-time graduate secretary. Beyond the routine things associated with her job (for example, processing all applications, corresponding with potential applicants, and maintaining detailed files and databases on all of our current graduate students), she has taken the initiative on many issues that go far beyond what one normally expect of a graduate program assistant. Let me mention three:

1. She created a single data sheet for each applicant to our program...
   
2. She organized and orchestrated our "Recruiting Weekend"... About two weeks ago she found records from the previous year of recruitment funding from the Graduate Studies Office and brought this to the attention of me and Mark Walker, our Graduate Recruiting Chair. Somehow we had forgotten to apply for these funds. We did so immediately, thereby saving over $1600 in Departmental funds.
   
3. She serves as the first contact when graduate students or applicants to our program have questions or concerns...
   

"As the staff member on the organizing committee for the Nebraska Conference for Undergraduate Women in Mathematics, Marilyn played a major role in the success of the conference. She did an excellent job in handling booking space, meals, and arranging transportation for panelists and plenary speakers. More importantly, she was proactive in every aspect of the conference organization, keeping us aware of looming deadlines and anticipating possible problems...

"Marilyn has made a huge impact on how efficiently the faculty can do our jobs. The graduate adviser and graduate recruiting chair both speak incredibly highly of her, as does every faculty member who has applied for a grant since she's been with our department...

"She is quite pro-active - she finds ways to be helpful in addition to doing the work that she's asked to do, and the quality of her work is consistently high. She is able to juggle a large number of tasks at once, since her organizational skills are tremendous...
"What is most impressive about her, in my opinion, is that she takes initiative and gets things done without having to be told what to do. She has good instincts, as well, and thus often completes tasks and solves problems before I become aware they exist. She is also a very cheerful person, which is a highly valuable asset in that she often communicates with potential graduate students directly. And I know from talking with several applicants that her helpfulness and friendly manner makes a strong favorable impression upon potential graduate students...

"In general, Marliyn is the kind of person that knows how to get things done and how to solve problems. She is very resourceful and efficient. She is always willing to help and she is always cheerful about it. I don't think anything ever fazes her."

March - Janet Carlson

Our Applause for March goes out to Janet Carlson in English. As her nominations state, "Janet Carlson has become an invaluable member of the English department staff in general... and she has done so through a combination of wide-ranging intelligence and extraordinarily hard work. The English department is a very large, very complex, and very demanding organization. We teach over 10,000 students a year in over 400 course sections (not counting summer sessions). Janet came to us from another college and with remarkable speed learned how faculty workloads are determined, how the curriculum works, how yearly scheduling is done, how books are ordered. She learned the names, faces, and personalities of over 100 permanent and temporary faculty members, as well as fitting in with a close and well-established cadre of administrative and office staff members. She learned and is learning one computer program after another... she not only learned her new job but had to learn simultaneously how to do it better. She has consistently improved our procedures, fine-tuning or replacing customary ways of doing things... Finally, in large and small ways, Janet has eased herself into the culture of this diverse department, sharing in its intellectual life and treating everyone here with respect and kindness...

"Janet's primary duties are monitoring faculty workloads, assisting the Vice Chair with the schedule of classes and, and serving as a liaison with the bookstore for all of the department's book orders. In a small department these tasks are probably very manageable, but in a large one, they can be insurmountable unless the person brings good computer experience and expertise to bear on the projects. Janet is able to do that and continues to update her skills to improve her ability to manage large amounts of data. Her work also means that she is in contact with every teacher in the department (we have over a hundred of them). She is very kind, caring and calm -- helpful attributes when dealing with faculty who may have scheduling or book order problems...

"Although she has a very busy job, she was willing to take on the task of editing the department's biweekly Newsletter. Our Newsletter is a calendar of events, an announcement of awards, prizes, publications, papers, and a place to put notices that will hopefully come to everyone's attention... Her cleverness and sense of humor come through... By making the newsletter factually interesting and providing some human interest items , she keeps people reading -- not an easy task in an ENGLISH department..."

February - Doreen Wagenaar

Our awardee for February is Doreen Wagenaar, administrative assistant for the A&S Humanities Center and for the Harris Center for Judaic Studies. As her nominations say "Doreen has proven to be an invaluable resource--bright, imaginative, hard-working, utterly reliable, not just willing to undertake new tasks, but positively eager to do so. She's the kind of colleague everyone at the university hopes for... She knows "how to get the job done" and handle many details with grace, including the budget. She also is very good in her people skills, dealing with faculty and all levels of staff, outside speakers, etc. She works independently and is definitely an initiator and self -starter, making sure deadlines are met and goes above and beyond in taking responsibility for every inquiry and situation that comes up in both programs and just "handles" them. She did a very good job in leading the organizing and planning of the move from Avery to Oldfather this past year... She is indefatigable in her pursuit of accuracy as she organizes symposiums, arranges the visits of scholars, produces the minutes of meetings, and keeps faculty updated. Always of good cheer, Doreen devotes time and effort selflessly to these two programs. She is so approachable. One can ask any question and Doreen has the answer. She is quick, at the ready to help, and kind."