Citation for Excellence Individual Campus Service:

Denise Besser of Human and Community Development

Denise Besser provides consistent, professional, high quality support to students, staff, faculty, and visitors. She does an outstanding job and goes above and beyond her duties. She is recognized for her professional, very friendly, and welcoming demeanor. She is exudes enthusiasm, optimism, and efficiency. Her excellent organization skills minimize overlaps. She is an excellent team member and is always ready to take extra duties. She always has a positive attitude and a willingness to help. Denise handles her ob with professional competence, flawless efficiency, courtesy, and care; she does an outstanding job and exceeds expectations. She has helped faculty understand the needs of students, and is always an efficient and accessible source of consistent, helpful responses about undergraduate instruction.

Citation for Excellence Individual General Contributions:

Lisa Zdybel of Art and Art History

Lisa Zdybel performs her duties in an exemplary and distinguished manner on a daily basis. She strives to continue to improve customer service to all who visit the department. Lisa goes out of her way to ensure that individual’s concerns are addressed. She devotes time and effort in to simplifying complex processes while finding alternate resources for use during these difficult budgetary times. Lisa contributed outstanding effort creating and distributing a departmental newsletter via electronic and hard copy. The newsletter has been complimented by many departments/individuals, including alumni, which has led to a much needed presence of the department to the campus and in the Art world. Another aspect of exemplary performance stemmed from the maintenance and evaluation of web pages for the programs in the department which has improved curriculum and lessened the costs of reproduction of materials for the department thereby saving the department funds.

Citation for Excellence Individual Supervision:

Marbella Sala of Center for Reducing Health Disparities

Through her leadership as Program Manager at the Center for Reducing Health Disparities (CRHD), Marbella Sala has provided the scaffolding and support that has enabled the Center to grow and develop. As a supervisor, Marbella is impartial, fair, dedicated and principled.  She listens to and validates her employees’ difficulties at work, and organizes retreats, celebrations, events, and staff meetings. She has even been known to bake homemade goodies or tamales and bring them to meetings. She is a grounded, wise, selfless, and encouraging mentor. Marbella maintains a positive attitude, enthusiasm, and motivation towards her work. She has proven to consistently be a dependable, reliable, disciplined, and resourceful collaborator, sharing generously her experiences with the Chicana/o and the migrant agricultural farmworker community as they relate to the center’s work: health disparities and the importance of sustained partnerships with underserved communities.

Citation for Excellence for Campus Service as a Team:

Energy Management Team:

Fred Haynes, Mark A Nicholas, Mark "Doc" Nicholas

During the past two years, the Energy Management Team has been tasked with reducing energy consumption across campus. They have provided outstanding projects with excellent results. The team targeted buildings with independent consultants providing cost analysis, projected savings in dollars and projected incentive monies from PG&E. The team worked long hours, nights, and weekends to meet specific time lines specified by PG&E and to this date have realized around $4 million savings with around 60% payback from PG&E. Some examples which reflect the month of February 2008 and 2009 are Sheilds Library, realizing $2,500/mo savings; ARC, which realized $1,800/mo. Savings; Mrak, which realized $2,100/mo savings. With more funding available, the team is developing even more projects to help reduce the carbon footprint and utility expenditure for the campus.

Citation for Excellence for General Contributions as a Team:

The Northern California Training Academy Team: 

Amy Spakosky, Nancy Hafer, Hilary Wilkoff, Christie Karlstad, Ann Gibson, Jennifer Davis, Kristi Smith, Melanie Schindell, Christine Altavilla, Grace Barajas, Chris Juvinall, Ken Ly.

The Northern California Training Academy Team understands the importance of the contribution of the county child welfare agencies and their staff, and our role in supporting their professional development and regional support of improving outcomes for children and families in northern California. The team travels extensively to provide over 400 days of training a year, working in partnership with 29 northern California counties. The team has worked to fill in the duties of five team members taking maternity leave in a year and a half, and is committed to engaging the community, and to providing education, training, and life long learning. Their attention to detail, fiscal management, enrollments, curricula development, classroom management, tracking and entering data, developing reports for state legislators, and contractors is outstanding. The team implements the scope of deliverables of over 4 million dollars worth of contracts each year.