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Biography:

Nominated by Jacqueline Neal, Director of Biology and Pre-Health programs.

Exemplifying reliability, quality of work, initiative, professionalism, and uniqueness of contribution.

Nicole has worked for the Department of Biological Sciences for three and a half years in the Biology and PreHealth Student Services office. Nicole's outgoing and friendly personality quickly led to increased responsibilities in the very busy, high call volume, advising center. She immediately adapted to scheduling appointments for multiple advisors, creating newsletters to assist in communications between the department and students, implementing a new filing system for undergraduate files, and maintaining information sheets and curriculum guides for all undergraduate and graduate students.

Jacqueline Neal, Director of Biology and Pre-Health programs who has directly supervised Nicole during her student employment wrote in her nomination letter, “Nicole's responsibilities have not ended there. With her own interest in health care (she’s a majoring in Nursing), Nicole has approached things from a student’s perspective and has helped to develop a new website and organize seminars and workshops, including the annual “Path to Health Professions” event. This event hosts over 400 high school students and admission representatives from around Ohio. Because of Nicole’s contributions, these programs have soared to greater heights and current and future WSU students will benefit from her hard work and dedication.”

Nicole’s commitment, loyalty, passion and bubbly personality are qualities truly valued by faculty, staff and students. With her strong work ethic and ability to multi-task, she serves as a role model and mentor to other student employees.

Nicole grew up on a farm in the small town of Glandorf, Ohio and is a graduate of Ottawa-Glandorf High School. She is planning to graduate in June and pursue a career in nursing, specializing in a high acuity field.

Nicole was recognized at a reception in Millet Hall on Tueday, April 14, during National Student Employment Week. Nicole is a “one-of-a-kind” and truly deserves this recognition. Congratulations, Nicole!

A special thanks to this year's selection committee:

• Kenneth L. Rosengarten, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Teacher Education, Lake Campus;
• Barbara A. Conklin, Office Assistant, University Libraries;
• Matthew Thomas Skira, Community Director, Hamilton Hall Office.

Congratulations to all nominees!

Thank you to those supervisors who participated in this year's program and nominated their excellent student employees:

Biography:

Nominated by Jean Denney, Assistant Director of Disability Services.

Exemplifying reliability, quality of work, initiative, professionalism, and uniqueness of contribution.

Brendan has worked in the Office of Disability Services for two and a half years taking on numerous roles and responsibilities. Brendan’s first position was as driver of the ����ԭ�� accessible minivan and his outgoing and friendly personality as well as his interest in working with students with disabilities quickly led to promotions to office assistant and programming assistant. And, he performed these duties with the responsibility and confidentiality of a professional staff member.

Brendan’s attitude and willingness to assist with whatever was needed led him to being promoted to roles with Starting Wright, a program developed as part of the Ohio STEM Ability Alliance grant which provides a webcasting program for high school students who are interested in STEM majors. Brendan aided staff in maintaining the technology needed in order to make this program a success. Additionally, Brendan served as the co-leader of the ODS Peer Mentoring program where he provided exceptional leadership by training peer mentors both in the classroom and at the low ropes course in Outdoor Recreation as well as planning and leading several off-campus activities for first-year students with disabilities and their peer mentors. He continued to co-lead the peer mentoring program for 2 years and developed and taught an academic course titled ED 101 – Mentoring Peer Mentors and Student Leaders for Students with Disabilities

Jean Denney, Assistant Director of Disability Services wrote in his nomination letter, “He quickly became everyone’s ‘go to’ student employee primarily because he was always willing to provide assistance and he never disappointed you with his ideas and follow through! Since his employment in Disability Services, Brendan has demonstrated exceptional work skills including exemplary reliability, initiative, quality of work, professionalism, and unique contributions to our department. We have been fortunate to have him work as a student employee in our department and his ongoing contributions in servicing students with disabilities.”

Brendan’s commitment, loyalty, passion, strong work ethic, and friendly disposition area qualities truly valued by students and staff in Disability Services. He is a role model to other students. Brendan will graduate in June 2010 with an undergraduate degree in Organizational Leadership. He is currently making plans to pursue a graduate degree in Student Affairs in Higher Education at ����ԭ��.

A special thanks to this year's selection committee:

• Joseph Berthiaume, Ph.D., Associate Director, Residence Services;
• Jennifer Thal, Graduate Student, Student Affairs in Higher Education;
• Gretchen Rentz, Student Services Specialist, Lake Campus.

Congratulations to all nominees!

Thank you to those supervisors who participated in this year's program and nominated their excellent student employees

Biography:

Nnominated by his supervisor Marcia Wendeln, Department of Biological Sciences, College of Science and Mathematics.

Exemplifying reliability, quality of work, initiative, professionalism, and uniqueness of contribution.

Matthew Porter began attending ����ԭ�� in January 2007 and is completing his Bachelor of Science degree in Earth and Environmental Sciences this fall. He was hired in the Freshman Biology Lab in the Spring 2007 and in 2 years became the most senior lab assistant. Matt continually looks for ways to improve the educational quality of the labs. He has been instrumental in creating new lab experiments and adapting them for the needs of students with disabilities. Additionally, he has taken on an informal leadership role by training new student employees, serving as a mentor for other assistants, and supervising the growing number of outreach programs for the lab. Some of these programs include the STEMM Exploring Science program for middle school students, Tech-Fest at Sinclair Community College, Take Our Sons and Daughters to Work Day at WSU, STEMM Summer Camp for students with disabilities, and several workshops for home-school groups. His dedication, resourcefulness, and leadership have resulted in extremely successful programs.

Matt takes initiative in several aspects of his job by improving lab equipment, fixing microscopes, designing methods to make experiments more effective, and searching on his own time to find materials that will help students' performance in the lab. A specific example of Matt's initiative is organizing a small team of student employees to re-build the Biology Department's dilapidated bird blind. He also got the group to commit to providing the labor and materials. Marcia Wendeln wrote in her nomination letter: "With some funding from the Dept. of Biological Sciences, Matt took the lead and they completely rebuilt the bird blind from only a frame, replacing the roof, walls, benches, and feeders. He brought in his own tools, picked up supplies with his car, and worked on Saturdays and evenings without pay to make sure the job was done. He also was instrumental in obtaining some donated supplies from Home Depot and Lowes. Although other students have helped with this project, we would not have a new bird blind in the WSU woods if it was not for Matt's extensive effort and long hours of dedication."

A special thanks to this year's selection committee:

• Chris Murphy Assistant Dean for Student Services College of Education and Human Services;
• Charles Long Assistant Dean for Academic Services, College of Liberal Arts;
• Evelyn Lauterbach Academic Advisor, Lake Campus.

Congratulations to all nominees!

Thank you to those supervisors who participated in this year's program and nominated their excellent student employees:

Biography:

Nominated by her supervisor, Dr. Hank Dahlman, Professor of Music, Director - Choral Studies, Director- CELIA (Collaborative Education, Leadership, and Innovation in the Arts).

Exemplifying reliability, quality of work, initiative, professionalism, and uniqueness of contribution.

Ashley's Contributions to ����ԭ��

In his nomination letter, Dr. Dahlman outlined some of Ashley's accomplishments in the Department of Music:

"Choral Library Renovation

"During the summer of 2011, in preparation for the new building project to renovate Schuster Hall in the Creative Arts Center, we needed to free up space in the Music Wing. That summer, Ashley, along with the junior level UCA Jeeremy Bon, completely renovated and re-ordered the entire choral music library. This included culling out-of-date and/or out-of-print, and obsolete scores from the files of over 1,000 choral octavo titles (small works) and over 200 major works and anthology titles and other book-format materials. While doing so, Ashley designed and entered data for a completely revised and computerized choral library database, replacing the antiquated and inaccurate card files. She and her student assistants (many of them volunteers that she personally recruited) also completely revamped the library work areas and office space, and oversaw the installation of new shelving in the library, following up with a complete re-filing of all the remaining choral titles. This was a HUGE job, and it was done extraordinarily well, with minimum faculty supervision. In my opinion, this alone should merit an award for Ashley.

"Coordinated registration: 2010 and 2011 Mad River Vocal Arts Festivals

"This event involves registrations from over 125 high school students representing some 25 or 30 high schools each year. Registration involves in-take and database recording of registration forms, collection of fees and delivering these the same day to the Departmental administrative assistant in charge of accounts payable, and regular contact with school directors, students, parents, and public school officials, bookkeepers, and other administrative personnel. Since this is a major recruiting event for us, it is essential that this task be handled in a highly accurate, timely, and positive and friendly way (i.e., "customer service"). Because of this, I typically have assigned this task to a graduate assistant or WSU staff member, but in this case, I had every confidence that Ashley would do an outstanding job. She absolutely delivered, and then some. Some would say it was the smoothest festival we'd ever had, and I'd agree.

"Choral Assistant for Bernstein MASS with the Dayton Philharmonic

"Last May, the WSU Choral Program, in collaboration with the Department of Theatre, Dance & Motion Pictures and the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra, presented a fully staged performance of MASS by Leonard Bernstein. The performances were the result of over three years of planning, and involved over 200 singers, instrumentalists, actors, dancers and technical crew. Over 80 choral singers from three different WSU choirs were involved. Ashley, along with graduate teaching assistant Amanda Hughes, oversaw all library and logistical matters pertaining to score acquisition, distribution and retrieval. The choral scores were only available as rental scores, EACH score costing $125 if not returned. Thus, we were responsible for the distribution and return of over $10,000 worth of rented scores. Ashley organized the whole thing, closely coordinating with the DPO Librarian. Needless to say, we got all the scores back from students, safely returning the scores to the DPO by the deadline.

"Choral Tour Manager

"Presently, Ashley is working as the Tour Manager for the Collegiate Chorale's presentation at the Ohio Music Education Association Professional Conference and our Spring Tour to Washington, DC and Virginia, which includes performances at the National Cathedral and Colonial Williamsburg. We will sing later this summer at the Champions Level of the World Choir Games, hosted this year for the first time in the US (as it happens, Cincinnati). As Tour Manager, Ashley is responsible for coordinating rooming lists, and contacting host organizations, providing lists of repertoire, and generally assisting me with the myriad of tasks and details, and often under strict deadlines. This is the smoothest year we've had in this regard, and yet the busiest, in over 5 years. No accident."

Congratulations and thank you, Ashley Leasure!