Janie Hamilton
Janie Hamilton, academic services facilitator and course information manager, has been a valuable part of UVA’s College at Wise for more than 30 years.
She has worked in several offices and departments, starting in the Office of the Registrar in the early 1990s. Her keen attention to detail and her strong work ethic have made her an invaluable member of the department, according to her nominators. She handles grade entry and course schedule planning, and she sets a good example for her co-workers. She also manages a new student information system and maintains excellent relations with faculty, staff and students.
Hamilton is “patient and kind and works diligently to accommodate the needs of employees and students,” her supervisor, Narda Porter, wrote in nominating her.
“Janie is a good friend, trustworthy, kind and very personable and sincere,” Porter added.
Alena Herklotz
Although Alena Herklotz, program administration manager for the School of Continuing and Professional Studies, has only been on the job for a couple of years, she is already being called a role model by her coworkers.
Previously at Fordham Law School, where she was executive director of summer law programs, Herklotz exceeds in collaborating and solving problems. She balances academic quality, accreditation compliance, financial restrictions and instructional design with the needs of nontraditional students and faculty requirements.
Last year alone, Herklotz worked on the creation and approval of eight new programs and 16 new courses in the school. In addition to the Master of Public Safety program, the new programs include six bachelor’s concentrations and one technology certificate.
Her efforts helped win state approval of the Master of Public Safety program, the first master’s program to be offered by the School of Continuing and Professional Studies.
She worked on the program’s proposal with its director, Timothy Longo, retired Charlottesville chief of police. “This critical task extended well beyond the mere writing of a document and included an incredible amount of research and analysis regarding the labor market, evidence-based practices and a clear understanding of the needs of America’s 21st-century public safety officials and the vast organizations and communities they serve,” Longo wrote.
Deborah Hoffman
She’s been called a goddess and a magician; Deborah Hoffman has worked for the Office of the University Registrar for 44 years, scheduling courses and managing academic classroom space. She’ll be able to hang up her wand when she retires this summer.
Laura Hawthorne, who became University Registrar a year ago, said Hoffman delayed her retirement for at least a year to support the transition under her leadership. “I have been grateful for that decision every day since,” Hawthorne wrote in nominating her.
“Her extensive, highly detailed knowledge of classroom space and faculty needs come together each semester to ensure that the institution is not only using its academic spaces effectively, but that faculty members are, whenever possible, placed in rooms that best support their pedagogical practices,” Hawthorne said.
Wynne Stuart, associate provost for academic support and classroom management, pointed out that early in Hoffman’s career, all the work was paper-based and her attention to detail was excellent and as essential then as it is now.
Hoffman learned and managed classroom scheduling with UVA’s evolving computerized systems, including SOURCE in 2004 and SIS in 2009. She also led the process of bringing in the automated system to schedule exams.
Both Stuart and Hawthorne, who have worked for Leonard W. Sandridge in the past, said that Hoffman deserves this recognition for her similar work ethic.
Bobbie Meadows
Bobbie Meadows is a patient care technician in the Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery Clinic, where the patients frequently comment on how friendly, knowledgeable, caring and funny she is.
From answering the phone to scheduling appointments to providing an extra pair of hands when needed, Meadows “represents the UVA Health System in an exemplary manner” and acts as a role model to her whole team.
“Bobbie Meadows exemplifies all that is right in health care,” wrote ambulatory manager Laurie Wright, who nominated her. “She comes to work with a positive attitude, is proactive in her approach to her coworkers and goes above and beyond to ensure that our patients have an exceptional experience.”
Michael Redwine
As a coordinator of instructional technologies in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, Michael Redwine works on UVA Engineering’s online graduate degree programs. But it’s the work he’s doing above and beyond his job description for which he’s being recognized with this award. It’s for a project that could have a huge impact on teaching – at UVA and universities across the nation.
Several years ago, Redwine contacted Karen Kurotsuchi Inkelas, a professor in the Curry School of Education and Human Development, about a “protocol for observing college teaching” that she had worked on, Inkelas wrote in her nomination. He came back a year later and “astounded me with a new and improved digital application-based version of my observation protocol” that he had tested in dozens of UVA Engineering classrooms, Inkelas said. It got her reenergized for this research, and now, she, Redwine and Lindsay Wheeler, assistant director of the Center for Teaching Excellence, are developing a “suite of digital tools designed to improve college teaching and student learning.” The team secured internal funding from the Jefferson Trust, the Curry School and 3 Cavaliers, a new seed-funding program from UVA’s Vice President for Research.
They say there’s no suite of digital tools like this in U.S. universities that combines institutional data, observation data and data representation.
In addition, Redwine is a role model and positive influence for students. Several students also nominated him because Redwine offered computer science undergraduates the chance to work on the programming involved.
The digital tools, wrote Rahat Maini, will “give professors deeper understanding and analytics of their teaching methods, captured and computed through the software we write, furthering UVA’s image as a world-class university and place of learning.”
Crockett Stanley
As the Medical Center strives to be “the safest place to give and receive health care, we are so lucky to be ‘coached’ along the way by Crockett Stanley!” said one of his nominators, Donna Via, an administrator in perioperative services.
Stanley, who has worked at UVA for 12 years, is a “Be Safe” coach for the hospital’s Quality and Performance Improvement Department, with primary responsibility for serving Perioperative Services. That includes the different phases of surgery – before, during and after – plus how supplies and equipment are used and maintained.
The “Be Safe” program is dedicated to ensuring a safe environment for patients and the frontline health care providers who tend them – nurses, doctors and technicians.
Stanley’s nominators noted how adept he is in getting people to talk about difficult things and to successfully navigate problem-solving. Thoughtful and considerate, his humble approach “can draw feedback from even the sternest of participants,” one nominator wrote.
Quality Improvement Coordinator Adriana Schwendt, another participant in the Be Safe program, wrote, “As I learned the various tools that can be used for quality improvement and how they can be applied to my specific project, Crockett was always there, willing to meet and answer questions, sometimes the same questions again, and always with patience.
“He is committed to the staff and patients as he works through every initiative to move frontline clinicians toward continuous improvement,” she said.
Iris Welsch
“When I think of Iris Welsch, I think of freezing mornings in November, standing by the side of the road, handing out water to the Bill Steers 4-miler runners,” said Ashley Shilling, associate professor of anesthesiology, who nominated Welsch for the Outstanding Contributor Award. Welsch, nurse manager of the Outpatient Surgery Center, recruited her and a “huge group” of staff to volunteer their help because “Iris is the type of person who motivates others.”
The fact that her door is always open and she always has chocolate might also help her in overseeing about 130 employees. She is known to work tirelessly for her staff, as well as for the patients. She has helped organize the moves of several operating room units to the Outpatient Surgery Center over the past few years, prompting one nurse to credit Welsch “for her vision, leadership, guidance, and mentoring her team through change.”
“From moving schedules to fit urgent cases, to moving equipment from the Outpatient Surgery Center to the main OR to accommodate patients, she is someone who always looks for a solution rather than an excuse,” Shilling wrote.
But it’s not just big projects that she devotes her time to orchestrating smoothly. Not long ago, Welsch helped work out a safe care plan for a homeless patient who needed cataract surgery. Shilling said it was “touching to see how much thought and love and time” she put into this one patient – just one example of how she pours her heart into caring for others, patients and colleagues alike.
Teresa Wimmer
For the first time in its 200-year history, UVA has the data of all of its 22,000 employees – in the Academic Division, the Health System and the University Physicians Group – in one system, thanks in part to the efforts of Teresa Wimmer, assistant vice president of enterprise applications, who worked as the Information Technology Services leader for the Ufirst Human Resources transformation project.
Wimmer still oversees the technical aspects of Workday, the cloud-based system now used to manage most human resources activities, to make sure that the 100-plus functions are integrated and working.
Sean Jackson, associate vice president and executive director of the Ufirst HR Transformation Project, said the transition to Workday was “one of the most complex, yet smoothest system implementations” in his 25 years of project management. Wimmer’s “institutional knowledge, technical acumen and strong work ethic” helped ensure a successful launch, he wrote.
Over 18 years, Wimmer “has held leadership roles in important projects that benefit the University community in significant ways, touching all corners of the Grounds,” wrote Jennifer “J.J.” Wagner Davis, executive vice president and chief operating officer, in supporting her nomination.
