UCOP held its semi-annual Service Award Milestone event Jan. 25 at the Elihu Harris State Office Building, adding to the tradition by announcing the inaugural recipients of OP’s new Innovation and Impact Awards.

President Mark Yudof, EVP Nathan Brostrom and VP Dwaine Duckett recognized 64 UCOP employees who have served the university for 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 years. They also spotlighted 18 winners of the Impact Awards, OP’s new annual honor recognizing exceptional individual and team contributions in three categories.

In introductory remarks, President Yudof said he was proud of UC’s long-serving and exemplary staff, upon whom the “stardom” of UC depends in its service to both the university and the people of California.

VP Duckett explained that the new awards program, overseen by UCOP Local Human Resources, is an idea he had been wanting to institute since coming to UC. All levels of staff except senior leaders are eligible for the Innovation and Impact Awards, and any OP employee can submit a nomination.

A total of 38 nominations for individual and team awards were received in the three award categories, representing a wide range of achievement from across UCOP.

Nominations were reviewed by a selection committee of representatives from the Black Staff and Faculty Organization, the Latino Staff Association, the OP Climate Committee, the OP Staff Assembly, the President’s Advisory Committee on the Status of Women, UCOP Pride (formerly the LGBTISA) and the Young Professionals Association; the committee’s recommendations were then reviewed by President Yudof.

EVP Brostrom announced the awardees — six individuals and two teams — for their innovation and impact and called each honoree forward to receive the awards. The honorees, listed in their award categories, were:

Connecting with the Community

The first award category recognizes individual volunteer effort or active service in a nonprofit community-based organization resulting in a meaningful impact on the local community or its residents:

• George Zamora (Student Affairs) for his active leadership in the Chicano Latino Alumni Association, including fundraising and organizing activities in support of nearly 100 scholarships to undocumented UC Berkeley students and CSAA scholarship opportunities for Asian students.

• Barbara Jim-George (Business Resources Center) for her work developing education and life skills programs for at-risk teen girls in Oakland to help them avoid becoming victims of human trafficking. She developed a Girl’s Rite of Passage Program as a thesis project for her Master of Divinity and continues this research in pursuit of her doctorate.

• A team award goes to John Mortimer (HIV/AIDS Research Office), Phillip Gardiner (Tobacco Research), Senaida Fernandez and Marion Kavanaugh-Lynch (Breast Cancer Research) for their outreach efforts to engage community members and organizations in research to improve their communities. These individuals have made it their own personal mission to bring research to bear in very real ways across California.

Modeling OP Culture and Principles

The second award category recognizes someone who strives to uphold UCOP’s principles of community, demonstrating commitment to and/or promotion of service and stewardship; inclusion of and respect for different viewpoints; dedication to making positive change, especially in the area of morale; and positive influence on managers, peers, supervisors, subordinates and the UCOP community.

Ginny Cox Delaney (Research Grants Programs Office) was honored for her critical leadership in the reorganization of RGPO, which included collaborating with other unit leaders to produce tools for improving work quality, coordinating training to improve working together as well as overall culture and climate.

Advancing the Mission

The third award category recognizes extraordinary leadership resulting in the accomplishment of significant goals or work products that serve the good of UC and/or the Office of the President:

• Paul Weiss (Information Technology Services) for his contribution to developing the Technology Asset Management Program and the new IT Project Office, partnering with UCSF on disaster recovery, and encouraging innovation and customer service within his department. Paul emphasized that all these achievements required a team effort.

• Dragana Nikolajevic (Research Policy Analysis and Coordination) for developing a new Reliance Registry web tool for leveraging the collective research power of all 10 UC campuses and Lawrence Berkeley Lab. Her work will facilitate the approval process for multicampus human subject research, making it more efficient and less burdensome for researchers, and thereby advancing the mission.

• Jayne Dickson (California Digital Library) for her work in developing and maintaining Frequently Asked Questions and other user support tools for the new Melvyl Catalog platform for UC Libraries. The Melvyl Catalog includes content libraries worldwide as well as UC Libraries, including millions of research articles across all disciplines. Jayne played a leadership role in educating library staff and researchers about the new platform, providing a model for user support.

• A team award was given to Bart Aoki, Julia Arno, Katherine McKenzie, Peter Agron, Karen Wirthlin, Stella Ngai, Luanna Putney and Ellen Auriti. This cross-functional Center of Excellence team representing ORGS, the Office of General Counsel and the Office of Ethics, Compliance and Audit developed a new Conflict of Interest and Professional Activities Policy, along with training and a conflict disclosure and monitoring program. The team went far above and beyond their initial charge and produced tangible results that serve to advance the mission. The team produced a policy and implementation process that establishes higher standards of conduct for UCOP employees engaged in managing research funds and promoting research.

Please join us in congratulating these long-serving and exemplary UCOP staff for their dedication and service!

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