Nomination Form

Na Ding Customer Service: Na provides excellent support to members of Financial Services and Human Resources.  She has been flexible in helping the departments through the conversion of PeopleSoft Financials to 8.9 and the system consolidation of this system as well as the very intensive conversion from HRMS to the ADP, centralized payroll system. 

Why: Na contributes everyday to the processes that allow the university to enroll students and account for their employees and state budgets.  She has a positive personality for others who are bringing problems to her.  She is continuing to learn new tools that help her solve programming problems for the systems that VSU's administration depends on. Recognition of this employee is overdue. She brings an enthusiasm into every project, big or small, routine or challenging. She has developed several applications that have increased efficiency and freed employees from labor or time-intensive tasks, which allows them to focus on other business matters. Despite her successes she is always learning and striving to do a better job. Her commitment is evident in everything from her attitude to her willingness to sacrifice her personal time for the institution.

Valerie Bayman Customer Service: Ms. Bayman is indispensable to the department. She serves both faculty and students with a smile, competence, and quickness that is incredible. Her kindness and efficiency in dealing with all the many people who rely on her for information, direction, support, materials and supplies, and assistance is appreciated by all with whom Ms. Bayman interacts. She consistently goes above and beyond any customer service expectations on a daily basis.

Why: Ms. Valerie Bayman deserves this award because she contributes so much to this department, college, and the campus. I doubt there is a more pleasant, efficient, or organized employee at VSU. Her day in and day out attitude, competency, and knowledge helps so many others to do their jobs so much better. Our department is a large one--24+faculty members and serves more students than most other departments. Our functioning is enhanced by the efficiency and competence of Ms. Bayman. Many benefit from her expertise.

Wilburn Leschber Team Effort: Sgt. Leschber is a supervisor within the University Police patrol division. During the last year the department went through several changes to improve efficiency and reduce costs.  Leschber developed a software program that the department could use to track areas of concern based on when and where crimes occurred on campus.  He also took part in preparing the department's policy manual to meet criteria for State Certification and developed policy to meet the department's needs.  He also revamped the Field Training Manual for new police officers when they initially come to the department. 

Why: Sgt. Leschber has shown that he is a team player here at VSU.  He has fostered relationships across campus that have improved communication related to needs of the department especially with the IT department.  He has creativity that has benefited our department using the kiosk and software programs as an example (from above).   Sgt. Leschber is easy going and gets along well with others inside and outside of the department helping to facilitate visibility and relationships within and outside of the department.  For these reasons I believe that he deserves to be the employee of the semester.

Rex DeVane Customer Service: Rex manages the Media Services Department in the Library. Using the work "manages," though, is weak and inappropriate because Rex is a leader in all senses of the word. His specific functions include the oversight of all Media Services activities including: the provision of specialized tools and equipment for working with digital media and producing multimedia products and presentations; providing specialized input and output tools, including devices for high-quality slide and flatbed scanning, photographic-quality output, capturing from and recording to videotape, and recording to CDs and DVDs. Rex also manages a wide assortment of software tool for producing, editing, presenting, and distributing digital media materials including the Adobe Pro and Macromedia software collections. Further, Rex and the Media Center provide the VSU community with a wide variety of traditional audio-visual and digital equipment for check out purposes.

Why: Rex is the consummate staff professional at Valdosta State. His record of service is superlative ad he is one of the most well-known and respected of staff members on this campus. His knowledge, enthusiasm, willingness to go the "extra-mile" to help a student, staff member, faculty member, or community patron with a media services project has become near legendary on the campus. He is not merely 'deserving' of this award -- he is a custom fit!

Sherri Wade Customer Service: Sherri Wade is always at her desk and always prepared to help the next student. She gives individual service to each new person who is interested in attending VSU at Kings Bay. She listens and explains to each person the path they will follow to obtain success in their education. Sherri is always sure to make our new and current students feel confident when leaving the office.

Why: Sherri Wade has been employed at VSU Kings Bay since our beginning. I have been here for three years and I do not believe that any of us has ever received recognition for what we do for our military and our surrounding communities. Sherri deserves this because she get us where we need to be and keeps our campus a wonderful place to be.

Angela Acosta Customer Service: Customer service is not merely customer relations or how nice frontline workers are to customers. Rather, satisfying or even delighting customers is the goal of excellent customer service. This is exactly what Angela does on a daily basis when dealing with the students, parents, faculty, and staff alike. She is the focal point for every work order request campus wide. There is not one work order request that does not come across her desk first, where it is assigned, scheduled, and prioritized prior to being forwarded to the various Plant Operations departments. Her commitment to excellence was demonstrated during the Aug 2011 student move in day. The Work Management Section received over 2700 work orders over a 4 day period. Angela quickly and efficiently assigned, scheduled and prioritized each and every work order with lighting speed.

Why: Angela is truly deserving of this reward because of her unwavering dedication and commitment to excellence. She is always willing to go the extra step when helping a customer and tries to live by these three core values passed down to her during her Air Force career: Integrity; Service before Self; and Excellence in All You Do.

Tracy Burch Customer Service: Ms. Burch is a senior secretary in the Dean's office at the College of Education. She oversees the management of the office, makes purchases, allocates classrooms, resolves students and faculty issues among other things. Her excellent customer service drives excellence within the Dean's office and the entire College of Education. She exemplifies cooperative and creative thinking skills in ensuring that all the needs of the faculty, staff, students assistants and the customers (students) are met in a timely manner. She supervises student assistants, providing them life lessons that would be useful in the future

Why: Ms. Burch deserves this award because of her selfless and professional attitude in helping others. She has taken more responsibilities within the Dean's office, which she juggles well on a daily basis. She is always happy to help students, faculty and staff. She is a problem solver, making appropriate decisions after seeking approval from top administration. She honors commitments and achieves deadlines. Ms. Burch's level of service is over 100%. The Dean's office, faculty and staff in the College of Education and the students she helps daily truly appreciate the quality assistance and service.

Blanche Thomas Customer Service: Ms. Thomas is the director of the College of Education copy center. She serves all the departments within the College of Education and the students. She maintain a respectful attitude and is always happy to help customers. She provides quality service and assistance to faculty, staff and students by ensuring that she meets deadlines for handouts, exam papers, training documents, and so on. She maintains confidentially with regards to test papers and quizzes that are printed by her department.

Why: Ms. Thomas deserves this award because she has earned faculty, staff and students' respect by her dedication to their specific needs. She ensures that customers have their copied documents from the copy center. Achieving deadlines is "top priority" in this department. Ms Thomas maintains a great relationship with all customers who use the copying center, thereby delivering excellent value and great customer service that Valdosta State University is known for. Ms Thomas is an integral part of the Dewar College of Education. Her interactions with staff, faculty, and customers (students) are invaluable.

Shelly Bryant Customer Service: Ms. Bryant serves as Secretary to the Department of Physics, astronomy and Geosciences. I have been a faculty member of this department since 1984; during the past twenty-seven years we have had five secretaries. All have been excellent, but I would have to rank Shelly as the best! Thanks to our series of public planetarium programs I would guess that Shelly may interact with the general public more than any other departmental secretary; this represents a considerable investment in time beyond her normal departmental duties. Her actions exude professionalism, and our department is very fortunate to have her!  

Why: Ms. Bryant is the best secretary our department has had during the past two decades ,and must certainly rank among the best currently employed at Valdosta State University. The lives of all faculty within our department would be much the worse without her!

Fredrique Dunham Customer Service: Besides the normal duties associated with being a department secretary, Frederique helps with outside activities.  Our department recently had a "Science Saturday" which was open to the public.  She helped with molecular modeling activity and took photos.  She also helped me to set up one of the activities the night before the event.  We were in the lab working on that until 8:30 PM.  Frederique has the advantage of having BS degrees in both Chemistry and Biology from VSU.  Because of that, she understands our students' needs much more than a non-science person would.  She frequently provides students with additional help in terms of advising and with their course-work.  She has also done an exceptional job in the office.  She has taken an office that was disorganized, behind on department bills, and in general not running efficiently, to an office that is organized, up-to-date, service-oriented and run very efficiently. 

Team Effort: She is not only helpful to the students, but she also helps professors resolve problems such as dealing with on-line forms and other computer-related issues.