2010/2011 Outstanding It technician award winners
On Saturday, April 2, at the Spring Conference, the following IT Technicians were named the 2010/2011 Outstanding IT Technicians: Mary Warthen, Sheemeka Johnson, Shenica Lamb, Ethan Rogers and Kyle Culpepper. All nominations were then submitted to the VSU Student Employment Office in consideration for the VSU Student Employee of the Year. We are proud to announce that Kyle Culpepper was included in the top five finalists. The VSU Student of the Year will be announced at an awards ceremony on April 14, 2011.
Mary Warthen was nominated by Brian Anderson, Classroom Support Coordinator. Some of the highlights from Brian's nomination included that Mary consistently exceeds expectations and completes all tasks assigned in a timely manner. Mary is also willing to stay late to complete time sensitive assignments to ensure that teaching lab schedules are not delayed or canceled. During Mary's service with Classroom Support he admired her many valuable qualities, and regarded her with evermore respect.
Mary displays eagerness to learn and is quick to pick up new skills. As she rotates through CSS areas more often than most of our representatives, we can say that she is a valuable asset to the department both due to her versatile background and personal adaptability.
Congratulations Mary!
Benjamin Li, Helpdesk Coordinator nominated Shemeeka Johnson. Ben stated that Shemeeka has shown an extraordinary effort in improving services provided by the Information Technology Helpdesk. She provides a high level of customer service and knowledge at the IT Helpdesk, whether it is providing a high level of support to faculty, staff, and students alike or helping train new employees, Shemeeka gives her best in everything that she does.
Shemeeka has recently worked on training videos at the IT Helpdesk that has led to a higher level of training for our new representatives. She is an employee who will pick up extra projects in her free time on the clock. Shemeeka is an extremely reliable employee who requires very little supervision and knows what it takes to succeed in a workplace.
Shemeeka has shown the initiative on numerous projects including the future involvement of a professional development session for faculty members in April. She will be presenting the software package Quandary, an action maze meant for improving classes by involving students in real-life situations. Shemeeka is constantly looking for ways to improve herself and the Division of Information Technology’s Helpdesk.
She never settles for anything but perfection on the projects she is assigned. I would not hesitate to consider Shemeeka one of the most valuable student assets in Information Technology.
Great Job, Shemeeka!
Shenica Lamb was nominated by her supervisor, Brian Haugabrook. Brian explained how Shenica came to IT over 18 months ago for a position in programming. As a Computer Science major she wanted to gain actual experience to better prepare her for a job after graduation. At that time we didn’t have any positions available for her. Instead of walking away she decided to work as an intern, with no pay, until a position was available. During her time as an unpaid intern Shenica learned the skills and tools that full time VSU programmers use. She taught herself how to write programs that interact with our campus Databases and programming languages that she had not taking courses for yet. She read through books and online forums to create an advanced (dynamic) website for the IT Helpdesk. After about six months a position was available and Shenica was our top candidate. Since being hired Shenica has continued to learn new technologies and skills. Her performance has been outstanding, completing the same amount of work as a full time programmer.
In January 2011 we began the development process for a mobile phone application for VSU. Shenica took the initiative to draw up diagrams and flyers to present to the campus. She also worked over a weekend to create a small draft of a magazine to demonstrate the features of a campus mobile solution. Being a new Computer Science major, Shenica has overcome many programming challenges that most students do not encounter until their Junior/Senior year. She completes her projects on time and is willing to take on new challenges to better herself. She has far exceeded expectations on each project she is assigned. We are all amazed at her creativity when designing websites for the campus.
Outstanding work, Shenica!
Rickey Wisenbaker from Network Services nominated Ethan Rogers. Ethan began working as a student assistant in the InformationTechnology Division in October of 2009. He began his work as a Helpdesk technician and worked with Desktop Support and A/V before moving to the Network Services office in May of 2010. As a student assistant, Ethan is a valuable asset to our department. Ethan demonstrates a strong work ethic being a conscientious and reliable employee. We can depend on Ethan to arrive on time and ready to work at the scheduled times as well as, trust his work to be complete and free of errors.
Ethan fits in well and maintains a professional demeanor when helping to resolve Hallnet user issues or assist with other tasks assigned to him. He can be counted on to take the initiative to ask questions and research to gain a better understanding of concepts in networking new to him.
I can say without reservation that Ethan Rogers has shown the qualities that any supervisor would be eagerly hoping to find in a student employee. Therefore, I believe he would represent our department well to be selected as the Outstanding IT Technician.
Excellent Job, Ethan!
Our last award winner is Kyle Culpepper. Kyle was nominated by Sterlin Sanders, Desktop Support Coordinator. Kyle joined the IT team as Lead Technician to work the evening shift to support the technical needs of faculty, staff, and students. His duties consist of hardware preparation/ troubleshooting of HP, Dell, and Apple desktops and laptops. Kyle has knowledge of Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7, Apple OSX, Microsoft Office 2003, 2007, 2010, 2011(Apple), data backup/restore requests, virus removal, email customization, etc. He is also capable of printer maintenance of iPhones, Blackberries, Androids, and the Ricoh open lab printers. Kyle provides classroom support that consists of replacing projector bulbs and troubleshooting Crestron units.
Kyle deserves this nomination because he goes above and beyond the above mentioned duties. Kyle’s reliability is a reflection of his punctuality at work. Faculty, staff, and students enjoy Kyle’s dependability in arriving on-site to a service call in a timely fashion; complimented by high guarantee of resolving almost any technical issue. His quality of work is comparable to a four-year veteran despite his one year servitude with our department. And his professionalism is the model of a full-time staff member. During my absence, Kyle immediately assumes the role of supervisor by ensuring the consistent basic job functions in the services center, managing staff, while simultaneously handling the continuous unexpected technology issues that may occur.
Kyle has the best work initiative amongst all our student technicians. He is always ready and willing to work and provides new ideas and techniques to increase job efficiency for the service center. Whether he’s lending a helping hand to setup a lab for classroom support, covering an open shift at the Helpdesk, or helping a faculty member move furniture, he is always willing to lend a helping hand. The most important attribute of all that identifies Kyle as a recipient of this award is unique contribution towards training. Kyle is the designer of the Desktop Services training material; which provides detailed instructions on hardware/software troubleshooting steps and installation procedures. Kyle combines job knowledge, experience, and personal appreciation in creating the training documents so that other technicians can easily comprehend the material and provide the highest customer service to the VSU faculty, staff, and students.
Exceptional work, Kyle!
Congratulations to all our award winners. All of us in IT appreciate all your hard work over the past year.
Last Update: 04/05/2011