Employees Honored at Luncheon

NMU faculty and staff were recognized at an April 19 luncheon for reaching retirement or various years-of-service milestones. The following awards were also presented:

Excellence in Service

Pictured with NMU President Les Wong are (from left): Principal Secretary Sarah Stanley (Learning Resources Division/WNMU), for helping her department operate smoothly by processing pledges and depositing contributions, creating the daily on-air radio log, answering telephones, talking to listeners and business supporters about their contributions and supervising the department’s student receptionists; Principal Secretary Andrea Wrubel (Art and Design), who beyond her typical office duties also monitors about 60 work-study students, enrolls and distributes students through Individual Art Review and coordinates schedules among full-time faculty and adjuncts; Sten Fjeldheim (Athletics), Nordic ski coach and assistant cross country coach, for guiding his teams' academic and athletic success, establishing the Superiorland Ski Club, volunteering with the Ishpeming Ski Club and starting a youth summer training group for high school athletes in Marquette; Carl Holm (Housing and Residence Life), for his effective leadership, instrumental role in implementing the card-swipe access system in the residence halls and Woodland Park and serving as the lead person in moving the preventative maintenance schedule from a manual to automated version; and Mike Turino (Academic and Career Advisement Center), for continually going "the extra mile” in building programs, developing relationships with students and working with a wide range of educators throughout the state and starting the Pathways to theFuture outreach program at the Jacobetti Center.

Distinguished Team Awards

The NMU WiMAX installation team have put in the necessary equipment on and off campus, increasing the coverage area of reliability of NMU's network to forward the goal of a strong technology learning environment and equal access to technology for all students. Pictured with Wong are (from left): Don Salo, John Marra, Ronny Paris, Don Duquette, Kim Erickson and Stephanie Penhale.

A team from Intercollegiate Athletics and Recreational Sports converted the National Letter of Intent signing process from paper to electronic. With six annual national signing dates, this process has allowed for more timely communication with NMU’s prospective student athletes, a cost savings of about $1,700 annually, an opportunity to showcase the use of technology in the recruiting proces and creation of an electronic form that student-athletes can keep in their files. An electronic fax service also was implemented. One of the signing dates was Feb. 2, the day the university was closed.  Without this electronic signing process and the electronic fax service, the department would not have been able to have all 28 letters signed and completed by the deadline. Members, who were unavailable for a photo, were Bridget Berube, Nita Thomas and Breanne Fassbender.

The public services team at Lydia M. Olson Library merged the reference and circulation desks to improve customer service and create a one-stop service point as part of the library's strategic directions in the Road Map to 2015. The team’s efforts also contributed to another goal of "enhancing processes throughout campus operations to guide the use of resources and inform resource allocation.” 

Participants, some of whom are pictured at right, were: Molly Anderson, Douglas Black, Mike Burgmeier, Mollie Freier, Kathy Godec, Diane Goethe, Marty Hill, Michelle Kimball, Kevin McDonough, Keith Rebec, Bruce Sarjeant, Mike Strahan, SaraJane Tompkins and Ernie Young (retired).

TLC Staff Awards

The MediaSite Live team set up a system that allows faculty members to have course meetings recorded (audio and video) and then made available on demand at a library page for each course. The system captures two separate data streams are from each course. One is the instructor’s laptop which keeps a running outline of the day’s topics via a classroom projection system and one can be switched from an instructor camera to a document camera to a DVD source. Students viewing the material on line can switch between the two streams, allowing them to use whichever is most useful for them. Students also have the option to more fully adapt class to their own particular learning styles and needs. Participants (pictured from left) are: Matt Herbig, Patrick Lakenen, Max Graves, Eric Smith and Jeff Koval.

The final TLC award went to a team responsible for the instructional documentation to support the EduCat system and supplement the live training offered. EduCat allows faculty to post and assignments, provide feedback to students and post grades. The team prepared and posted permanent documentation that consisted of a screen capture video with detailed voiceover explaining how to use the new EduCat software.

The team also modified the general open-source documentation that came with the system to accurately reflect the ways that NMU uses EduCat. By implementing the training documentation in this way, the team supported the new technology to make it immediately usable in a way that is not dependent on a regular 8-5 schedule of support and training staff. Members are (from left): Matt Smock (AIS-Instructional Technology), Michelle Kimball (AIS-Library) and Thomas Gillespie (AIS-Instructional Technology).