Jobs Well Done: Honoring the 2013 Service Excellence Award Winners
Team Service Excellence Award honorees
It takes a lot to make a university work. Keeping the facilities safe, clean, and running smoothly; disseminating information to students, applicants, alumni and parents; coordinating public programs and tours; helping students with financial aid, travel, and activities, the list goes on. Add to this the challenge of making it all work in the heart of Manhattan, and you have a challenge that doesn’t just benefit from excellence—it demands it.
To recognize contributions made by outstanding New School staff members, on April 18, President David Van Zandt presented the 2013 University Service Excellence Awards. The honorees were nominated by students, faculty and staff, and represented a broad cross-section of The New School’s workforce.
“Over the past few years, there’s a positive change that’s taken place at the university in respect to service,” President Van Zandt said in his introduction. “People have taken the Service Initiative to heart, and taken ownership of it. Service is in the water now.”
Service Excellence Awards went to Luisa Ayala (Foreman, Design and Construction), Alisa Bayes (Assistant Director, Student Services), Julie Novacek Godsoe (Associate Director of Project Management, Communications and External Affairs), Craig Tiede (Manager of Campus Visit Programs, Enrollment Management) and Josephine Tirado (Program Administrator, Parsons).
In addition, this year a new award was unveiled: The Team Service Excellence Award, which recognizes the contributions of a group of two or more working together in a department or area toward a common goal, or individuals from different areas who are collaborators on a shared project. The inaugural award went to the team who instituted the DegreeWorks program, a digital system that streamlines and simplifies the degree auditing process. The group’s work has saved thousands of students and scores of advisors countless hours of work and eliminated uncertainty about individual’s progress toward completion.
The 2013 Team Service Excellence Award winners are Alina Requena, Bill Kimmel, Christopher Meeder, Daniel Nicasio, Jaime Babic, Jennifer Simmons, and Ricky Price (Enrollment Management); Antoinette Curl, Brian Maasjo, Jill Corson Lake, Juli Parker, and Nikki Cherry (Parsons); Michelle Materre and Vanessa Reich (The New School for Public Engagement); Marian Anger and Dan Zheng (Information Technology); Jon White (Eugene Lang); Marilyn Groves (Mannes); Carrie Neal (Drama); and Tsuya Yee (The New School for Social Research).
Whether they were honored as individuals or as a team, all award winners noted that their achievements reflected the hard work of many individuals across the university. “Here, every employee is encouraged to find what they’re really interested in, and to explore it and grow it,” said Julie Novacek Godsoe. “That’s what makes The New School such a great place to work.”