Individual Award Recipients:
Laura Adams
Kathryn Bader
Alfred Day
Tiff Dressen
Lupe Gallegos-Diaz
Lin T. King
Samantha Lubow
Adriana Martinez
Stephanie Ngan
Shamaya Pellum
Emily Ufheil-Somers
Team Award Recipients:
CalNet Team
CED-IIT Manager Team
Cogeneration Plant Acquisition Team
Jacobs Institute Maker Pass Staff
MyVoice Working Group
Pink Tank
Student Affairs and Cal Performances Student Events Staff
The Well
Workplace Health and Safety Video and eLearning Course Production Team
Individual Award Descriptions:
Laura Adams
Summer Sessions & Study Abroad
Laura played a critical role in developing several online applications for multiple Summer Sessions, Study Abroad & Lifelong Learning (SSALL) programs through the Slate application/admission software. Because it is not her area of expertise, Laura took hours of classes and trainings to master Slate and collaborated with various campus offices to include different perspectives and stakeholder needs as she built out these applications.
Once launched, Laura intentionally and thoughtfully created job aids, training opportunities,and feedback sessions, ensuring her colleagues felt supported and empowered to use and leverage the system as efficiently and effectively as possible. In addition, Laura served as a mentor for SSALL’s new dual degree programs, sharing her experience, knowledge and strategic guidance. Laura is extremely student and staff focused, and she brings a creative lense to her work and her unit that truly enables SSALL to achieve its key programmatic goals.
Kathryn Bader
Public Affairs
Kathryn has sole charge of UC Berkeley’s main social media channels, leading an efficient network of communication. Her efforts were particularly exceptional as she navigated the volume of messages and news during the 2107 free speech movement controversies.
Kathryn served on call during this time, managing and responding to the intense scrutiny the campus received in that period and ensuring the latest messaging was shared before other groups misinformed the general public. Katheryn also created a social media mentorship program, the Social Slice, which allowed students to gain experience working with official campus social media channels and learn from the group’s leadership.
Alfred Day
Division of Student Affairs
In Alfred’s five years at Cal, he has built and fostered a dynamic and effective campus approach to student support and intervention. He served as the first Case Manager at the Center for Support and Intervention (CSI) and demonstrated the clear need for both additional staff to support students and increased awareness of CSI’s services. Alfred’s initiatives have allowed CSI to expand across campus, solidifying the cross-campus Students of Concern Committee and advancing the Center’s outreach to staff and faculty.
Alfred is an honest and conscientious supervisor who consistently engages with his team in dialogue around equity, inclusivity, community, and collaboration and empowers them to perform at their highest level.
Tiff Dressen
Office of the Vice Chancellor - Research
Tiff led the charge to design and support a faculty-driven project to assess UC Berkeley’s culture and processes for innovation and entrepreneurship. Tiff’s research required close to 150 interviews both on and off campus, culminating in a 60-page report covering a variety of topics and findings such as the campus climate for entrepreneurship and models/mechanisms for supporting these efforts at Berkeley. The report’s creation and findings truly represent faculty-staff partnership and are leading to significant shifts in Berkeley’s strategies, structures, and processes for innovation and entrepreneurship. It is Tiff’s leadership and support that has made this work possible.
Lupe Gallegos-Diaz
Chicano/Latino Student Development
Lupe serves our campus in multiple roles--as the Director of the Chicanx Latinx Student Development (CLSD) Office, the former Director of Strategic Initiatives for the Center for Latino Policy Research, and the Coordinator of the Latinos and the Environment Initiative. Lupe is committed to fostering an inclusive community, and her dedication shows in the many programs she coordinates, such as the Sin Fronteras theme program seeking to enhance its service mission as a leader in supporting undocumented students.
Lupe counsels and fosters the development of staff and alumni through mentorship and has made consistent contributions to creating an equitable and inclusive campus community, specifically in her support of underrepresented and marginalized communities. She is an invaluable member of the Berkeley campus.
Lin T. King
Office of Facilities Services
Lin is an ambassador for UC Berkeley’s commitment to sustainability, spearheading the Zero Waste by 2020 initiative for our campus. Lin collaborated with many sponsors in order to help Cal become more sustainable, and has partnered with Cal Athletics to create The Pac-12 Road to Zero Waste Competition. Lin was essential in the planning and implementation of sustainability initiatives for Chou Hall, which will be receiving the US Green Building Zero Waste Certification. His commitment to sustainability and innovative ideas have continued to move the campus forward in achieving our zero waste goals.
Samantha Lubow
Housing & Dining Services
Samantha is the Environment Initiatives Coordinator for Cal Dining, managing sustainable food procurement and zero waste for dining locations with a particular focus on plant-forward initiatives. Through her work, Samantha has increased the purchasing of sustainable food projects, and led the efforts of sourcing for Browns Café that earned a 2016 CHESC Best Practice Award by ensuring 80% of ingredients are sustainably sourced. Sam has been an integral part of advancing the campus in our sustainability goals, including UC-wide goals, contributed to sustainability education efforts, and increased efficiency of Cal Dining as a department.
Adriana Martinez
Campus Shared Services
In May of 2018, Human Resources Generalist Adriana Martinez identified a gap in campus communication to student employees and to supervisors. Adriana took an analytical approach to and was able to offer an effective solution that produced real change. Thanks to Adriana, all campus-wide DocuSign packets now include specific, clear, and concise information on policy and are more accessible on a variety of platforms. Adriana is an outstanding staff member who brings positivity, inclusivity, and recognition to her team and our campus.
Stephanie Ngan
Division of Student Affairs, Facilities Services
While Department Safety Coordinator at EH&S, Stephanie launched the Stretch and Flex program for over 200 custodians at Facilities Services. The program serves to improve safety and staff engagement through voluntary warm-up exercises. Stephanie also initiated the joint rescue training exercise with the Berkeley Fire Department (BFD), which consisted of three days of space rescue training bringing together Facilities Services and BFD. Stephanie revitalized the department’s safety culture through an array of safety activities and innovations that have improved staff readiness. Her work reinforces the value that everyone has a role in safety and everyone has a voice.
Shamaya Pellum
College of Chemistry
In 2014, Maya expanded a peer advising group within the College of Chemistry (CoC) from three students to twelve. Three years later, she developed a peer tutoring program utilizing five student tutors to host a 116 tutoring sessions over 28 days of service. This successful tutoring program grew at a rapid pace and served to create a strong sense of community among students. These programs have improved student satisfaction within CoC and have continued to ensure equity among students who arrive with fewer resources. Maya’s dedication has addressed issues with intentional solutions focused on expanding student services in CoC.
Emily Ufheil-Somers
Haas School of Business
Emily served the Haas School community as chair of the Dean's Staff Advisory Committee (DSAC) and worked closely with the HR team to create Staff Engagement Task Forces, serving as one of the co-chairs for the Learning & Development task force. Emily provided essential coverage on several roles within the Haas School’s Development & Alumni Relations Office and through this learned new functions, identified workflow gaps and improved and streamlined existing processes. Emily’s expertise, knowledge, and mentorship has supported the professional advancement of colleagues across Haas leading to impactful outcomes and service to others.
Team Award Recipients
CalNet Team
Karl R Grose, Brian Koehmstedt, Jeff McCullough, Veronica Ong, and Summer Scanlan
The CalNet Team is charged with ensuring data security for the campus community. Over the last year, the CalNet Team moved the community towards a safer and more secure data environment with the execution of the CalNet 2-Step two-factor authentication.
The team rolled out 2-Step authentication to 32,300 employees across campus, working with various stakeholders to execute this program and integrate the authentication platform with multiple campus applications. They focused on customer service, making enrollment easy and efficient, creating a comprehensive support guide and adapting this documentation regularly in response to comments and suggestions from users. They also utilized reporting tools in ServiceNow to analyze and respond to trends in service tickets.
The CalNet 2-Step project was successful due to the team’s innovation, adaptation, and efficiency, which resulted in our data becoming safer and more secure.
CED- IIT Manager Team
Jeff Allen, Jill Martin, Patty Mead, Christopher K Palmer, Semar Prom, Elizabeth Thorp, and Alex Warren
In 2016-17, the CED-IIT Manager Team made equity and inclusion a major focus, specifically mentoring disadvantaged students, making activities supported by Miscellaneous Student Fees more affordable, supporting students with financial constraints, and tackling issues of food security.
The Manager Team accomplished these goals by reclaiming items during Studio Clean Out for students unable to afford supplies; repurposing significant numbers of external and flash drives for low-income students; reducing or avoiding MSF increases; creating a tool loan program to reduce student out-of-pocket expenses; supporting the Undergraduate Fee Waiver program; starting a paid Junior Mechanician program to teach relevant and marketable fabrication skills to people of color and women who are underrepresented in the building trades, and creating design-build summer projects that improve the storage and distribution of food via the Campus Food Pantry.
The team’s work showcases a strong commitment to inclusive and equitable community engagement and sustainability as they worked to create impactful programs and support for students.
Cogeneration Plant Acquisition Team
Gilbert Escobar, Jerry Jimenez, and Sara Shirazii
The UC Berkeley campus is served by a cogeneration plant which provides both steam and electricity to the campus. With the third party lease scheduled to expire in July 2017, the Cogeneration Plant Acquisition Team worked to determine the campus’ best option for continued energy delivery, negotiate a successful conclusion to the existing arrangement, take ownership of the plant, procure a new operator, develop a long-term contract with that company and transition operations to the new vendor without any loss of function. The new arrangement is already paying off in reduced costs for campus energy. This team’s effort shows the highest level of dedication and expertise and they collectively protected the campus from the potentially disastrous effects of a failure in the plant’s operations.
Jacobs Institute Maker Pass Staff
Amy Anh Hoang Dinh, Gary Gin, joey gottbrath, Chris Parsell, Mary Catherine Richardson, Roland Saekow, and Kent Wilson
The early goal of the Jacob Institute Maker Pass Staff was to create a space for innovation and to give access to advanced technologies to a wide range of students. With the opening of Jacobs Hall in August 2015, thousands of students from dozens of majors now have access to cutting-edge tools in an interesting and welcoming space. This space caters to all students ranging from an undeclared freshman in their first semester to a Ph.D. student in an Engineering field, looking for highly advanced fabrication resources.
The team has worked collaboratively since August 2015 to create, launch and scale the Maker Pass program – a semester pass which grants students, faculty and staff access to prototyping and fabrication facilities in Jacobs Hall and the CITRIS Invention Lab. Today this program serves nearly 1200 students, faculty and staff each semester with representation from twelve schools and colleges.
Advance skill-building workshops developed and led by this team appeal to a diverse range of students interests, and have included such topics as 3D printing, chocolate molds, designing electronic music instruments and using laser-cutter and sewing machines to make custom pillows cases. Another example of their innovative efforts is the Maker Pass Admin Software system which keeps streamlined records of waivers and safety training, reducing possible paperwork burdens for the Design Specialist staff. The entire team worked on carefully ensuring that information about Maker Pass was clearly communicated and that the application process was easy to navigate.
Finally, the team has been very generous with their time and knowledge, frequently consulting with other units on campus to share ideas of how they might scale or improve their facilities.
MyVoice Working Group
Andrew Eppig, Joy Evans, Mari Knuth-Bouracee, Amber Machamer, and Amber Zeise
The MyVoice Working Group is a cross-campus collaboration of staff committed to creating an academic environment free of sexual violence and sexual harassment. The group designed an innovative and trauma-informed campus-wide survey to learn more about the campus community’s experiences with SVSH, attitudes around prevention, and knowledge of resources. Mindful of the disproportionate impact that SVSH has on marginalized communities, the team ensured it was translated into Spanish and Chinese and distributed paper copies directly to staff without access to computers.
Other campuses are now requesting to use the MyVoice survey and the working group has committed time to write a user manual for the survey so that others can implement it effectively.
Pink Tank
Laura M. Alie, Elizabeth Aranda, Sam Byrd, Tony Cantu*, Don-Anthony Capone, Billy Curtis, Tova Feldmanstern, Sarah Gamble, meckell milburn, and Tobirus Newby
Pink Tank is an interdisciplinary, multi-departmental, multicultural collaboration of dedicated and committed campus staff who advocate for the health, mental health, and wellbeing of LGBTQ+ students. The team has taken significant leadership in establishing a broad definition of wellness and bringing together mental health, social health, medical, and prevention/health promotion. Pink Tank has been essential to the creation of supportive space and community during times of political climate change, "Queer Resilience." Through this cross-campus collaboration, Pink Tank provides students with access to information and resources and people with whom they can feel safe asking questions. This work has lowered barriers to seeking such help and care, destigmatizing help-seeking, and making existing services more accessible through information and support. The Pink Tank creates an inclusive program that frames health and wellness for LGBTQ+ students with multiple intersectionalities and serves to provide visibility of LGBTQ+ health providers and health advocates.
The team’s work embodies an impressive commitment to community engagement that is both inclusive and equitable. They are creating a space that enhances Berkeley’s mission and reputation, serving to not only maintain but improve our campus excellence.
Student Affairs and Cal Performances Student Events Staff
Robert Bean, Millicent Morris Chaney, Gabriella O'Halloran, Ginarose Perino, Marissa Valdez Reynoso, and Jeff Woods
The Student Affairs and Cal Performance Student Events Staff team successfully managed a project that the campus did not choose for itself: on-the-ground management of the free speech events in September 2017. Thanks in large part to the exemplary professionalism of this team, the campus survived those events with its reputation as a bastion of free speech intact.
This team also turned crisis into opportunity by working through the rest of the academic year to turn the team’s experience into good policy, specifically the Major Event Policy, and to address the harm that was caused by the threat and reality of speakers coming to our campus who oppose our values of diversity, equity and inclusion. The policy that the team shaped has become a model for other UC campuses and for public universities nationally.
Their commitment to fostering equitable and inclusive community engagement, as well as their focus on innovation, adaptation, and efficiency, has enabled Berkeley to remain a place that both defends free expression and is a leader in promoting diversity, equity and inclusion.
The Well
Takiyah Jackson, Kiara Lee, and meckell millburn
This team led to the creation of The Well: Where Black Folx Come to Health – A Black Health & Wellness Project. This project started as a PATH to Care Center-led outreach and healing effort aimed at serving black survivors of sexual and relationship violence. However, that project’s planning team quickly realized there was a broader need for healing, health and wellness services tailored to the Black community. The Well is an intergenerational endeavor that actively engages students, staff, faculty, alumni, and members of the Black community. In the planning process of this project, these leaders engaged, collaborated, and received input from all parts of the community. These three leaders worked over several years to vision, develop, apply for funding and subsequently secure several years of funding for this critical initiative.
The Well addresses intersectional trauma, promotes healing and wellness and aims to promote a sense of belonging among the Black community at Berkeley. In The Well, Black community members build relationships, enhance knowledge and skills related to health and wellness, and share wisdom and cultural practices of resilience and healing.
Specifically, The Well aims to promote an inclusive and equitable community by creating support and wellness spaces. It also seeks to normalize healthy lifestyles, wellness, and healing to address cumulative impacts of trauma that pose barriers to the Black community.
The Well aims to create a significant, positive impact in addressing the retention and further diversification of our campus community. In 2017-2018 The Well provided 15 workshops and served over 400 members of the Black community at Cal. The Well’s leadership exemplifies the best of Berkeley’s staff and their care for the vibrant diversity of UC Berkeley. They exemplify the belief that when each member and the broader community is safe, secure and in community, we create psychological and intellectual space to create, innovate and further the academic mission of UC Berkeley.
Workplace Health and Safety Video and eLearning Course Production Team
Roy A. Berke, Alisha Klatt, and Jonathan Schainker
This team created the Workplace Health and Safety Training Video/eLearning Course. This course is required of all employees including staff, researchers and faculty. They created versions in English, Chinese, and Spanish. After sharing the final product with other UC campuses some are adopting the idea to create their own versions.
One team member was the instructional designer, scriptwriter, and overall creative force. Another paved the way through the organizational hierarchy and communicated with and sought participation and approvals from all stakeholders. The third led the way with video production expertise.
The instructional designer used cutting-edge eLearning techniques, in particular, the use of video featuring members of the UC Berkeley community as a tool for getting the points across. This was done because familiarity with local personalities in this context is extremely effective in helping the user feel a greater connection to and then remember and operalizationalize the content. Also, they used a newscast format because it is a familiar style to most people. Finally, to make the course even more memorable they used campy humor to inspire good feeling and discussion.
The eCourse is available on demand at any time through the UC Learning Center, however, an in-person class is offered if requested by any group, in particular, those who do not use computers during the course of their work. Together this team was creative, efficient, inclusive and they produced a product that meets all compliance requirements in a memorable, inviting, humorous, quick and effective manner.
*indicates that team member is ineligible due to appointment type