CASL Staff Recognition Awardees

Asma deserves this award because she is an essential staff member for the Center for Arab American Studies. She is an outstanding research and administrative assistant, who carries on a lot of duties with poise and equanimity. From supporting the publication of the Center's monthly newsletter to co-producing the podcast, scheduling meetings, managing public events, producing beautiful outreach material, and handling day-to-day administrative tasks for the Center, Asma brings creative energy, an engaging smile, and skillfulness to all she does.

If there's something she doesn't already know how to do, she learns how to do it! If there's an idea she has for the Center, she shares it. Asma also takes direction constructively and builds on it with her own contributions. She is curious, thoughtful, and engaged, and she brings a wealth of her own research knowledge and cultural sensitivity to the work she does at the Center.

As interim director for the Center of Arab American Studies at UM-Dearborn, I am so happy I get to work with Asma as my assistant! I can also vouch that she is well-liked by faculty,  staff, and students alike.

While there are many reasons why Nada deserves this recognition (her excellent work guiding the P&T process, her work on the Chancellor's Staff Recognition Committee, etc.), I want to highlight and acknowledge the outstanding guidance and mentorship that she is providing to her peers here in the Dean's Office.

As virtually all of the Dean's office staff is new to their positions, Nada's knowledge of the college and of how things are done has been of the utmost importance. Indeed, my staff regularly sing her praises and compliment the work that she does with them. Nada's eagerness to assist our team in succeeding is deeply appreciated and merits this recognition.

A better question than "Why do you feel this person (or group) deserves this award?" in Sue's case would be, "are there enough accolades to share about Sue and her work.

As I sat down to write this, I received an email from a faculty member letting me know how helpful Sue had been in designing a program for an upcoming event. Emails such as this one are nearly daily occurrences when it comes to Sue. You are an inspiration to us all Sue! Thank you for all that you do for CASL!

Kiara is a tremendous addition to our team. Her work is always first rate and customer focused. She is also always willing to take on new responsibilities/tasks. In this capacity, Kiara recently volunteered to try a job share between the college and the Department of Social Sciences where she currently works as an Administrative Specialist. This is an entirely new position for her and entails the mastery of a brand new skill set.

This is also a new model of staffing for the college. Kiara has taken to her new role very well and, because of her outstanding attitude and work ethos, is roving that this type of an arrangement is a viable one for CASL. The college owes Kiara a huge debt of gratitude for her outstanding work!

I want to take a moment to recognize Angie for the tremendous work that she has done for the college relative to organizing LEO work and in ensuring the college's compliance with the LEO contract. Her work in this vein has been wide ranging (template letters, timelines, Teaching Professor process, etc) and thorough and all of it has been done in a manner that has built greater trust between the college and its LEO employees.

This was a thorny set of tasks to take on and Angie has been very successful in this work. Thank you Angie fr your efforts on the college's behalf.

Tasha is the biology laboratory manager and is responsible for coordinating all the labs. This is a very detail oriented job with a lot of moving parts such as ensuring all the lab courses and all the experiments are well planned; all the reagents are prepared in a timely manner in order to ensure the students are receiving the best experience in lab. She is responsible for training all the staff. She is the glue that keeps the labs going. Tasha’s dedication to her job is evident when sometimes something does not go as planned during the labs, and she ensures that it is taken care immediately. She also works closely with the instructors to make sure that things go smoothly.

It has been a pleasure working with her and it makes the teaching more enjoyable for both my students and myself.

Brandon's contributions to the college are many and his work is both excellent and very much appreciated. I would like to especially single out the work that he is doing to lead the working group that has been tasked with overseeing the move of the SSCI department to the CASL Building. His leadership in this group has been widely praised and he is guiding the process in an even-handed way; ensuring that all are being heard and that a full and transparent discussion of the process is taking place.

This work falls far outside of Brandon's assigned duties and exemplifies his always positive and thoughtful approach to everything he does. Thank you, Brandon.

Rachel is always willing to help and ensures the department run smoothly. Even when she is clearly busy, she provides assistance and guidance to anyone in need of it.

She goes over and beyond to ensure that people feel taken care of and are able to accomplish what they need or want to. She is responsive even when it's unexpected. She makes the office approachable and fun, decorating and providing a friendly face. She really is an asset to the department and the university, and as a new faculty member it has been invaluable having her as a resource.

I am pleased to nominate Marlene Dupre for this award. In the 25 years that we have worked together, I have seen Marlene offer crucial support for students and faculty through her role in the Advising office. For me personally her assistance has been indispensable in my own student advising work in Women's and Gender Studies, Economics, and SOAR. She has been particularly helpful to students of mine from historically underrepresented groups. Those students' experiences with Marlene, they reported to me, made them feel like they had a champion in the Advising office. Feeling like someone in the College has your back can make such a difference - especially to socioeconomically disadvantaged students and adult learners struggling to balance work, school, and care obligations.

I recently read in the CASL Connect newsletter that Marlene has been at UM-Dearborn for 39 years. What a legacy of sustained, exemplary service to create a more inclusive and welcoming campus and foster student success! The award could begin to recognize and celebrate this legacy.

I wish to recognize the vitally important role that Nada has played in the hire of five new staff members here in the College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters over the last 6 months.

During a time where the Dean's Office was very short staffed and when she was moving into a new and expanded professional role (not to mention the additional work she was doing to fill in for vacated staff positions in the Dean's office), Nada committed her time to serving on search committees for two departmental Administrative Specialists (Natural Sciences and Mathematics and Statistics--the latter of which ran through two cycles due to an unsuccessful initial search), an Administrative Specialist Intermediate in the Dean's Office, and the Business Administrator Senior and Business and Financial Operations Administrator positions in the Dean's office.

In all of these searches (as reflected in comments by the participating Chairs and other search committee members) Nada offered great insight into the various candidates' strengths and weaknesses and greatly assisted in the addition of five outstanding new staff members to the college. This is a vitally important contribution and one that should be recognized.

Thank you Nada for helping to shape the future course of our college through your outstanding work in these searches.

This summer, the Center for Math Education launched a four week summer math camp, Math Corps U(M)-Dearborn@KRONK. The camp was free for 28 middle schools student, supported 12 high school students with stipends, and supported 6 college students with summer salaries. From the field work with the kids to the logistic support from the department, this was an enormous undertaking. Three separate grants were needed to funded the entire camp.

As camp director, I relied on Elisa and Becky so much. They worked tirelessly behind the scenes to make sure that the camp was a success. Not only did Elisa and Becky quickly handle all of my correct requests and forms, they expeditiously corrected and processed all of my error-filled submissions (error-filled submissions were by far the majority). I am so very grateful for how Elisa and Becky supported our first Math Corps summer program. Their support helped kids in our community learn mathematics in a safe and supportive environment.

Lindsay has held down much of the administrative duties in the department this past academic year, as her excellent fellow administrators Lisa and Lori have had to be out for personal reasons at different times.

Lindsay is always helpful, very responsive, and it's great to work with her. I really appreciate the hard work that she and Lisa and Lori do to make the department function.

I am pleased to nominate Belinda Soliz for the "Celebrating All Staff Loyalty" award. Belinda epitomizes this award, consistently going above and beyond her job duties to support any faculty, staff, or students who come her way. Not only does Belinda do an outstanding job providing crucial support to the Social Sciences Department, she also makes it a point to welcome and support other faculty and staff who work out of the Social Sciences Building.

I have experienced this firsthand being one of the few CWP faculty working and teaching primarily in SSB. Despite not being "officially assigned" to work with me, Belinda has never hesitated to provide all kinds of assistance to myself and my students, as well as to go out of her way to provide additional support to campus student orgs.

More than this, Belinda manages to remain cool, calm, and collected in the face of any challenge, quick to brainstorm and problem-solve viable solutions. Her vast knowledge about and experience on campus is invaluable, and her warmth and positivity are absolutely contagious--a rare and special quality that is essential to creating an inclusive environment on campus. I cannot think of anyone more deserving of this award than Belinda Soliz.

I am a less-than-perfect account keeper. Sue works with me and makes sure everything is right. She "rescues" me from time to time. Her work with me on my Ottawa accounts in invaluable.

I've been working closely with Greg for the past 18 months on a grant funded project to record and digitize the Aspects of the Holocaust course. Greg’s been a wonderful collaborator on the project, serving as cameraman, executive producer, engineer and creative consultant, all the while trying to keep me on track. Greg also worked with Sidney Bolkosky to record an earlier version of this course for the CASL Reach program in the early 2000’s.

I’ve also been privileged to work with Greg for over 22 years in my role as curator of the Voice/Vision Archive. He’s filmed and recorded numerous events and speakers hosted by the archive. Greg also played a key role in filming a large portion of the interviews found in the archive and his work plays a key role in the success of the archive.

Greg’s work on the earlier version of this course and his work with the Voice/Vision archive made him an invaluable collaborator on this project.

I want to recognize Nada for her outstanding work this year on managing the college's Promotion and Tenure process. While P&T support has been a part of Nada's work load for the last couple of this years, this year, due to a number of staff departures, the entire process fell to her. Nada handled this sudden transition with the utmost poise and professionalism and she expertly guided the college's heavy case load (14 cases-about double what we normally see) through the entirety of the process without a single error or problem.

Indeed, in my now eight years of involvement with the college's Promotion and Tenure cases I have never seen the process run as smoothly or as flawlessly as it did this year. This success is due entirely to Nada's hard work, intellect, and perseverance. She had no one to mentor her through the process or to assist with the work that needed to be done. In fact, sudden absences in other academic areas on campus left Nada in the position of quickly becoming the campus expert on all things P&T.

As always, Nada was gracious in sharing her expertise and the lessons she learned in the process. The entire college owes Nada a big "thank you" for her work in this area.

Sue Gedert is an integral member of the CASL community and I cannot think of anyone more deserving of this award. Although much of her work happens "behind the scenes" and may, at times, seem invisible, her expertise in marketing and digital content does not go unnoticed. Sue's domain is expansive, supporting the college's marketing and communication efforts, social media initiatives, webpage development, and more!

Despite this long list of key responsibilities, Sue is always available to assist with even the smallest of marketing and web requests. I can't count the numerous times I've reached out to her for information or assistance over the years with everything from promoting an event or course or student org to updating a website. Each time, no matter the ask, Sue is at the ready with an answer or an update!

Moreover, she is kind, knowledgeable, and thoughtful. It is clear that Sue truly cares about our campus--going above and beyond is simply her normal. Sue does such a wonderful job promoting the exciting work of our faculty, staff, and students, all the while making us feel seen, heard, and supported. I hope she knows that she is seen and supported, too!

Rick is the very face of positivity to our students and faculty. As an instructional learning associate, he supports the training and operation of all the software for our multimedia activities in the CASL TV studio and the many courses in Journalism and Screen Studies. He also helps support technology in the Kochoff Language Lab and for the Applied Arts.

He’s always ready to help a student solve a technical problem and he has designed and offered countless workshops to support our courses. During the pandemic he created training videos and resources that students and faculty could use to supplement our online classes. We couldn’t succeed with our program in JASS without the dedication (and smile on his face) that Rick provides on a daily basis.

Lindsay is always ready and willing to help, no matter what is thrown at her. She has stepped up and is showing everyday how to navigate difficult issues and tasks, always with a smile and a calmed attitude. I couldn´t be in better hands. Thank you, Lindsay, I´m really happy to work with you!!