Twelve honored for staff excellence

The Board of Regents awards recognize persons whose special contributions to the University extend beyond campus to the state or nation. Winners of the Board of Regents awards are:

Julia Golden, curator of the Paleontology Repository in the Department of Geoscience and interim director of the Museum of Natural History. She manages the repository, which involves sorting, organizing, and cataloging thousands of specimens per year that researchers bring back from expeditions. She designed and manages the database that tracks the specimens and she is responsible for outreach, fossil hunts, fossil identifications, and about 30 presentations per year. She teaches Collection Care and Management in museum studies and is co-managing editor of the Journal of Paleontology. She also is the UI representative to the national Association of Systematic Collections and is active in the Society for Preservation of Natural History Collections.

Randall Jordison, assistant to the chief of medicine, internal medicine, works with 180 faculty members, 70 residents, 80 fellows, and more than 465 staff members in the Department of Internal Medicine. He is credited with implementing major changes in staffing of clinical services, developing new billing procedures and aggressive recruitment efforts, instituting promotion processes, communication systems, and divisional support systems, supervising fiscal accountability and expense management, and the evolution and organization of the department’s clinical and research centers.

Susan Mask, assistant to the president and director of the Office of Affirmative Action. She has worked to diversify the University campus, remove barriers to people with disabilities, and educate the campus on prevention of sexual harassment and discrimination. She has vigorously defended affirmative action in the face of nationwide controversy and declining support. She is a member of the Regents Inter-institutional Affirmative Action/Equal Employment Opportunity Committee and the Committee on Interinstitutional Cooperation of Affirmative Action Directors, including the Big Ten institutions. The number of minority faculty and staff members has nearly doubled since she was appointed as the director.

Cheryl Hoogerwerf Reardon, administrative associate in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, manages all accounts and projects in the department. She is credited with improving staff morale and work ethic after taking over a large staff with a strong history of independence. She is a founding member of the department’s external advisory board and made major contributions to the organization of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences staff recognition ceremony. She helped to formulate a uniform University policy on the fabrication of capital equipment and was recently elected to Staff Council.

Jay Semel, director of the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies. He has developed the center to be a supportive and stimulating community for scholars working independently or in collaboration. He directs the Obermann Summer Research Seminar and a competitive grant program, and he supports faculty members preparing proposals for internal and external grants. He is credited with making the Obermann Center “one of the premier interdisciplinary studies centers of its type in the United States.”

Maggie Van Oel, director of Residence Services, is in charge of the University’s nine student residence halls. She has instituted major construction and renovation projects to make the halls more comfortable and to upgrade safety equipment and landscaping. Inside the buildings, she has opened new coffee shops, convenience stores, athletic facilities, and study rooms. She supervised the transformation of Hillcrest Market Place, a popular “food shop” concept of student dining, and will supervise a similar project in Burge Hall. She also is credited with expanding the number of in-house advisers for students in the residence halls.

University Staff Excellence Awards go to persons whose contributions to the University show extraordinary job performance:

Scott Elliott, computer-based instructional designer in the Office of Consultation and Research in Medical Education, has developed computer software packages that help medical students succeed. One package simulates physician-patient encounters, allowing third-year students to develop clinical skills by interacting with virtual patients. All first-year medical students use his ClinicSoft package. Elliott also developed a program called Testware that students use in third-year clinical clerkships. Recently he developed Testware: Anywhere, a new package that enables medical students to use the Internet to access practice tests.

Lisa M. Ingram, assistant director of the Academic Advising Center, has strengthened the center’s role in student orientation and recruiting, in addition to making the experience of undergraduate students more positive and productive. As the center’s liaison to the Office of Admissions, she has worked with orientation staff to plan summer programs and make major changes to their structure and content. She devised block advising, a system that allows first-year students to spend more time with their adviser, and successfully lobbied for longer adviser meetings with transfer students. She was instrumental in developing an Introduction to Academics component in orientation that more fully integrates parents into the advising process, and she substantially revised the training program for orientation student leaders.

Joelle L. Jensen, associate director for clinical services for the Medical Surgical I/Behavioral Health Services Nursing Division, is responsible for 13 inpatient units and 10 clinics of the University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics. She recently served as interim associate director of clinical services for the Medical Surgical II Nursing Division. She has encouraged formation of staff-led groups to study the nationwide nursing shortage and the rapidly changing health care system. Jensen has worked closely with management leaders to resolve staffing issues. She has maintained fiscal responsibility while expanding and improving clinical programs, including the development of the palliative care service, integration of thoracic surgery into the clinical cancer center, and expanding outreach activities in several areas.

Hazel Kerr, administrative associate in the Department of Chemistry, is chief of the merit and professional and scientific staff for the department. On her initiative, 10 staff members have been promoted to higher classifications. She acts as mentor of junior staff members and was instrumental in creating the department’s new laboratory coordinator position, which serves more than 1,000 students. She also works with faculty members in projecting costs and personnel placement for external grants and contracts, helps to develop laboratories for new faculty members, and initiates efforts to upgrade and repair laboratories in the aging Chemistry Building.

Suzanne Miller, orthotist in the Rehabilitation Engineering Department of UIHC’s Center for Disabilities and Development, fabricates and modifies equipment for individuals with neurological complications and fabricates custom mounts, switches, and laptrays to help clients communicate. Miller shares some of her projects with orthotists across the United States at national meetings. She is credited with being the first person to explore limited outreach services in clients’ hometowns. Her commitment to her work extends to teaching Spanish to co-workers so that all staff members can communicate with their patients.

Eunice Prosser, secretary IV, Graduate College, is a central figure in the experience of every graduate student at Iowa. For more than 15 years, she has coordinated submission of plans of study, comprehensive and final exam reports, and maintenance of academic records for more than 6,000 graduate students per year in almost 100 master’s and doctoral degree programs. In addition, she shows concern for students with dilemmas, helping her co-workers counsel and direct troubled students, and being “a friendly face at a critical time” in the students’ lives.

Article by Anne Tanner