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Presentation of the
2002 OVPR Staff Awards
May 9, 2002
Good afternoon and welcome. I am Fawwaz Ulaby and I welcome you to this very special occasion to recognize five individuals for their outstanding service in support of research on our campus.
Before I present the awards, I'd like to say a few words about this awards program and why it is important. First, last week the National Science Foundation released a report about R&D conducted in the U.S. Surprisingly, the State of Michigan was ranked number two behind only California. New York was third behind Michigan, and Massachusetts was next.
Certainly, the great majority of the R&D conducted in our state is connected to the auto industry. But the University of Michigan was also featured in the NSF report, ranked as the nation's top university in R&D spending. Research is a major part of the University, comprising 31% of our operating budget, totaling $600M in 2001.
But money is not the most important indicator of success or greatness. A reporter called me last week to talk about the NSF report and asked about the relationship between money and excellent research. I told her that money is important in that it makes many excellent things possible. Our success in attracting funding also suggests that our faculty members have ideas for research directions that funding agencies find exciting and choose to fund.
There are other ways to measure the impact of our faculty's research. A few years ago, there was an analysis published that examined which universities had the most journal articles cited. This is based on something called Citation Index, which catalogs all of the papers published in major journals. Anyway, in this analysis, the University of Michigan ranked fifth overall in number of papers cited by other scientists, and was first among public universities.
Now, what does this have to do with today's event? Before we can spend money on research, we have to win research awards. To win awards, we have to submit winning proposals. These proposals have to not only propose creative ways to discover new knowledge and solve existing problems, but they also have to show a track record of accomplishment by the faculty, students, and staff.
For all that to happen, our massive infrastructure requires able research administrators to act as accountants, legal experts, compliance officers, and a myriad of other functions, but most importantly they are facilitators. And they have to do this in spite of M-Pathways!
Given how critically important the role played by the administrative staff who makes Michigan number one in research, it is only fitting that we honor the people who serve the community of researchers on campus. Please take some time later to view the plaque on display here, which in engraved with the names of the awardees and hangs on the fourth floor in Fleming just outside the elevators by the Office of the Vice President for Research.
The two awards we are presenting today are, first, the OVPR Exceptional Service Award, which honors staff members from OVPR or any of the units that report to OVPR. Then there is the Distinguished Research Administrator Award, which honors individuals from any unit at the University who have demonstrated over a number of years a level of distinguished service that exemplifies the highest goals of professional research administration.
And in order to be able to present these awards, we need good nominations. So I want to thank all of those who took the time to prepare the packets, gather the information and letters of support that are necessary. We often overlook this group of true colleagues, who play such an important role in all awards.
The excellent nominations were then reviewed by a committee composed of last year's award winners, and I accepted their selections explicitly and without reservation. So let me now thank the selection committee members:
- Dorene Markel, Program Director in the Center for Clinical Investigation & Therapeutics;
- Jane Ginopolis, Administrative Manager in the Department of Geological Sciences in LS&A;
- Owen Jansson, Administrative Manager for the Center for Human Growth & Development;
- Patrice Somerville, Administrative Manager for the Department of Environmental Health Sciences in the School of Public Health; and
- Tom Zdeba, Senior Project Representative in the Division of Research Development and Administration
Now I would like to start by presenting the Distinguished Research Administrator Awards. The program booklet includes a citation and some background information about each of the awardees, so I will not repeat them, but I'd like to add a few additional remarks of my own. As I call your name, please come forward to receive your award.
Now I would like to start with the Distinguished Research Administrator Awards.
I'd like to ask Linda Peasley to come to the front.
Linda is the Basic Science Administrator for the Department of Human Genetics in the Medical School where she has worked for the last 14 years. Speaking on behalf of her department, Dr. Tom Gelehrter, Linda's boss and chair of the department, says "The Department ranks first in the Medical School in research dollars per FTE and seventh nationally in NIH funding." And then he adds "This is in no small measure the result of the superb grants administration support that Linda provides our faculty." One of her colleagues said "Linda faces all of the pressures that accompany growth with fortitude and good humor, and she's always willing to contribute her time and knowledge to her co-workers and other administrators on campus."
What's truly remarkable about Linda is that she does all of this while holding what most of us would consider to be a second job. For many years, Linda has been involved in the Mid-Michigan Fine Arts Association and the Community Theatre of Howell. And when I say involved, I mean that she has served as Stage Manager or Producer for more than a dozen stage plays since the early '90s...starting with "Oklahoma" and "Hello Dolly" to "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "Singin' in the Rain." So, before I present this award to you, Linda, I was hoping you might quickly organize a little song and dance number for us. Any chance you might do that?
Next, would Laurie Staples please join me.
Laurie is Assistant Director of the Survey Research Center in the Institute for Social Research. As most of you here know, being assistant director of something as big and complex as the SRC, with close to $50M in funding this past year, it means that the place simply doesn't function without Laurie. She has been instrumental in reorganizing and improving all of SRC's administrative systems, including the implementation of a budgetary forecasting and monitoring system that has proved exceptionally useful for strategic planning and operations.
Laurie, like her co-award recipients, has been generous with her time and talents by participating on a number of campus-wide committees and task forces. For example, she has kindly contributed to the RAIN program, a comprehensive training program for research administrators that was developed by a cross-campus team and is offered by DRDA. Laurie has presented a module on human resources to several classes of RAIN students, and she even volunteered to assist with a little TV-style game show which takes place at the end of the fourth day of training by playing the part of Vanna White -- to very high ratings, I might add.
But I must share one last thing about Laurie. I have it from very good sources that she has devised a very effective technique for getting your attention. Whenever you see her calmly lower her glasses to the end of her nose, like this, and look over them at you, beware -- the lecture is about to begin, and you'd better tune in and follow through.
Next, I'd like to call on Virginia Wait.
It is a great personal pleasure to present this award to Virginia. Virginia is an incredibly effective administrator; in fact, she's becoming something of a legend lately. Not only does she run a huge department, EECS, with 100 faculty, some 1000 undergrads, 650 graduate students and a $40M annual research budget, she also contributes to the University's research program through her role on many committees and teams like the RAIN program, and most recently SPIT. SPIT is certainly a unique challenge. The name alone is a challenge. SPIT stands for Sponsored Programs Implementation Team. Virginia chairs the SPIT team which is composed of a group of senior administrators from across the campus working together with key administrators from DRDA, Financial Operations, Purchasing, etc. Their challenge is to methodically diagnose problems with current research administration policies and practices, develop a treatment plan, and then implement the necessary changes into M-Pathways or whatever system is applicable. I guarantee you that if the SPIT team accomplishes 50% or even 20% of its stated objective, the research community will forever be indebted to Virginia and her team.
I'm certain that one reason she won this award is due to her frugal approach to managing University resources. She often works 12-hour days (and apparently her staff plans to buy her a cot to make life just a little easier). She stays until 6 or later on the eve of every holiday. Working lunches is the norm, but of course, playing racquetball with her faculty is still considered working.
However, her -- dare I say -- Spartan attitude is seen carried over into her personal life. Her diet seems to consist largely of rice, bread and fruit. Her culinary skills have withered away, her cookbook seems to consist only of recipes for popcorn and steamed broccoli, and she can usually be counted on to contribute something from Zingerman's at all departmental potlucks.
Finally, her staff are anxiously waiting for her to show up at a special event wearing something as flashy as two-tone shoes!
Whatever you wear or eat, it's still my pleasure to present this award to you.
Now I would like to present the OVPR Exceptional Service Awards.
First, would Karis Crawford come forward.
Karis Crawford is a Program Associate for the Arts of Citizenship Program, one of OVPR's most unconventional units. Arts of Citizenship is a unit that provides a connection between the world outside of the university to research and teaching in the arts, the humanities and design within the University. The unit emerged from the Year of the Humanities and Arts, or YoHA, which was sponsored by OVPR back in 1997 and 1998.
Karis joined Arts of Citizenship in 1998 as the unit was getting started by David Scobey, the program's director. As the program has grown, so has Karis's importance. She has become indispensable to so many vital activities, including grantwriting and fashioning publicity materials for the program.
She is also a writer of fiction and non-fiction, and one of her books, titled "Natural Childbirth After Cesarean: A Practical Guide," is available on Amazon.com as a collectible, with a sales rank of 81,353, quite impressive considering Amazon's large collection of titles.
Karis is also a determined environmentalist. She and her husband are currently having a solar home built, and it was featured last fall in the American Solar Energy Society's National Tour of Solar Homes.
A characteristic of Karis is that she is "hyper-organized." So when Arts of Citizenship underwent a review not long ago, Karis gathered every document pertaining to its creation and operation and put them in a binder that must have been over six-inches thick. When the binders were given to the external reviewers, it prompted one of them to ask whether the University will pay the chiropractic bill for the spinal adjustment required after hefting this notebook to a day's worth of meetings.
Thank you for your thoroughness, Karis, and contribution to upper body strength among research administrators.
I would now like to invite Lee Katterman to join me.
Shortly after moving into my present position, I quickly realized that in order to be effective in my job, I needed to establish a position of "jack of all trades," I needed someone with the versatility to be:
a) an information officer, to gather information for me on complex and often controversial national policies such as stem cell research, cloning, Federal funding for certain programs, and so on,
b) this person should also have the skills and talent to carry out demanding projects with very little direction, and
c) and this is very important, he/she has to have an unwavering can-do attitude.
Those traits describe Lee Katterman to a tee. Often when I sit down with Lee and say "I have another project for you," and I'm saying it with some reluctance because I know he already has several on his plate, instead of grimacing, his face lights up with a smile and he's ready to add all kinds of ideas of his own to beef it up and improve it. A perfect example is the video we prepared for the Regents a few months ago. Lee was the director, producer, script writer and he produced an outstanding video featuring many famous alumni, faculty, CEO's, and the ranking member of Congress chairing the subcommittee on Science. It was as professionally done as can possibly be.
Lee interacts with many parts of the campus, and he's viewed as resourceful, charming, and always ready to help. In fact he was nominated for this award, not by me or any of the OVPR staff, but by Cinda Sue Davis, Director of the Women in Science and Engineering Program. In her nomination she describes in detail how helpful he was to the WISE program, and then she adds: "I doubt very much that much of what I have described above is part of Lee's job description. In fact, I am not certain exactly what his job description is! His many skills and talents have no equal."
Before I hand Lee his award, I have to share with you a little story about Lee. This happened before my days at OVPR. Apparently when Lee moved from DRDA to the Fleming Building, his first day on the job was on Halloween, so he introduced himself to the Fleming staff as a member of the band KISS, he wore a wig over his crew-cut hair and his face was painted white. Lee is also known for his special taste in neckties. Lee is certainly unique!
Now I'd like to present Lee with his award...
Present plaque and honorarium
Thank you all for coming. Please stick around and enjoy the food and the company of your colleagues.