SNS Impact Awards

   Josephine Vang, nominated by Dora Lopes

Josephine Vang is most deserving of an impact award for the school and campus-wide projects she worked on in Fall 2022. While the Personnel Unit was down two staff members, she remained positive and dedicated to our customers to ensure that they received the best service possible and that they could continue to excel in their mission to the University.

Within the Personnel team, Josephine took on a significant portion of training our 2 new staff as they joined in the fall. She was instrumental in training them on the Advancement case process in order to process 66 cases; which include MCAs, Merits, Tenures, and Promotion cases for both Senate and Non-Senate faculty. This training included the ins and outs of the ACRS system, Qualtrics Voting system, and the Bylaw 55 policies/procedures which are unique in all 5 different departments. This hard work was instrumental in our cases being processed on time and I am happy to announce that we are ahead of last AY which was a very important goal for Dean Dumont and our school.

Josephine served on the SNS Staff Council, she participated with other council members on the SNS Staff Task Force and together they came up with the staff portion of the SNS Long Range Planning. The SNS Staff Task Force’s charge was to develop and implement initiatives in areas such as staff training, professional development, and staff and faculty collaboration. Josephine was proud to serve on the SNS Staff Professional Development series. The program which was initially a monthly series changed to a bimonthly series, and then eventually was incorporated into the monthly staff breakfast events in an effort to gain higher staff attendance with the least disruption to their work schedules and to better engage staff participation in professional development activities and discussions. 

Josephine was the lead from SNS, working closely with the Academic Personnel Office and staff members from SSHA and SOE to work through the new Unit-18 Faculty Contract. Her work with these other groups was integral to identifying and establishing new hiring, performance review, and promotion processes for Unit-18 Faculty. She created training materials for Department Chairs informing them of the new requirements and processes relating to the new Unit 18 contract. She shared her ideas in a discussion with those from other schools and collaborated with the central APO office and other schools to ensure our processes match one another and meet the new contract requirements. Unrelated to the new contract, she continually collaborates with the central APO office and other schools’ academic personnel to discuss development and improvements to ACRS system. Josephine’s leadership in implementing new Unit-18 Faculty hiring and review processes will be a key component for Department Chairs to hire and retain the best instructors for UC Merced’s undergraduate students.

Finally, from a professional development perspective, Josephine’s dedication to continuous improvement for herself and the school was shown by her selection as a member of the UC Women’s Initiative Cohort from 9/22 through 11/22. This UC systemwide program provides training and resources to support the success and advancement of mid-career, woman-identified professionals committed to their mission. She utilized the OARRS worksheet; which was designed to help plan out events in order to meet the goals set for specific activities when she facilitated a professional development activity last year on teambuilding. She felt the activity was a success in allowing participants to engage and discuss their thoughts on how important teambuilding is to meeting project objectives. Also, as a result of attending UC WI, she agreed to serve as a facilitator for the UCM campus. I am continuously impressed with how calm and collected Josephine remains even when working under pressure. She is an asset to SNS and UC Merced and I am very grateful to have her on our team.

   Mariah Gonzales, nominated by Chelsea Arnold

This year, Mariah initiated a program bring in 5 College Corps fellows from all different majors across campus to lead activities in the CalTeach Learning Lab. In a few short months, she has worked with these students to craft, and refine several field trips for the Learning Lab. Mariah used modeling techniques, showing the fellows how to teach a field trip session and gradually handed off the teaching one by one to each student. She recognized where students needed extra support and provided that support to help build student confidence. As a result, the College Corps fellows are now confidently leading STEM activities (totally outside their majors) to middle school students. In addition, College Corps admin did a site visit to watch the fellows in action teaching a 4th grade field trip and were so thoroughly impressed with the experience CalTeach is providing to the fellows, that they have promised to send more fellows to CalTeach next year. I have spent several days watching the fellows work with elementary and middle school students in the Learning Lab and I am so impressed with how much they have grown as educators in such a short period of time.

   Maricela Melendrez, nominated by Jenn Souza

Maricela has always been such a positive and dedicated member of our team. She has been part of the transition committee, that is made of academic advisors from across the schools, that is tasked with developing strategies to ease our first-year students into their second year (and in their perspective schools). This committee works hard to find the best ways to support our students with this big transition from the Bobcat Advising Center, to their new and permanent advising units. Maricela has cultivated and developed relationships across the campus, that has always had a positive impact on how she supports her students. She is always the biggest cheerleader and advocates for her students, and is always willing to go the extra mile. Our team would not be the same, without her smiling face and positive attitude. She is known around campus for her positive attitude and moral support. 

   Erica Robbins, nominated by Angie Salinas

Erica has been instrumental in supporting out BIO faculty with key projects aimed at improving the student experience. As her supervisor, I continue to be in awe of the dedication and loyalty she models every year. 

 

Specifically, in 21-22, Erica's leadership and organizational skills were exceptional when working with department chairs. I'd like to recognize Erica's work with our BIO faculty. Erica successfully facilitated two improvements to the BIO transfer student experience. With the multiple changes in faculty leadership over the prior year, there was increased interest in reducing barriers to transfer student success. As the transfer student advisor, she has the unique opportunity to make recommendations to the faculty. The first was the acceptance of non-calculus-based physics to the one-year physics requirement for the major. Before Fall 2021, it was required that transfer students complete our one-year calculus-based physics series even if they had completed the non-calculus-based series at their community college. 

 

The second recommendation was to change the minimum grade required in BIO 1 for transfer selection to the BIO major in alignment with the campus' goals of increasing transfer and overall student enrollment. Since at least 2006, transfer students were required to earn minimum B grades in courses articulating to BIO 1 to be admitted to the major. This barrier greatly limited the number of transfer students coming into the major. The time was right to modify the minimum grade to C, thus aligning our requirements with other programs in the system and increasing access to qualified transfer students. 

 

Given our campus' need to grow and the UC System's increased focus on serving transfer students, Erica successfully worked with the Life Sciences Curriculum Committee to eliminate the CHEM 100 requirement for selection to the BIO major. Erica made this recommendation to the BIO major chair after the faculty had expressed interest in reducing barriers to transfer admission to the major. She worked closely with the chair and received guidance from the Director of Admissions to ensure our office proceeded with the correct implementation strategy. Erica crafted a memo for a short-term waiver for Fall 2021 and Spring 2022 for immediate implementation, unanimously approved by the LSCC and signed by the chair. In terms of organizational abilities, she facilitated the updates to the catalog copy, which provided a long-term removal of the requirement. With Erica's sound judgment and ability to advocate for these changes, students are now better positioned to complete their degrees at UC Merced. 

 

Erica worked closely with partners in the Office of Admissions and BIO Program Chair Gordon Bennett to ensure the changes shared above were completed within the appropriate channels and communicated broadly. Starting with the Fall 2021 admitted transfer students, Erica offered students the option of using their previously completed non-calculus-based physics for the one-year physics requirement for the major. This change allowed students to use credits that would not have been applied to degree requirements in prior years and thus reduced the total number of courses these students would need to complete to earn their degree. The change in selection criteria was implemented in October 2021, and Admissions was able to admit transfer students to Spring 2022 using the updated requirements. We expect to see more BIO transfer students admitted to the program in Fall 2022.

 

When I mentioned my intention to nomincate Erica for this award to Dr. Gordon Bennett, he shared the following: " Hi Angie, I fully endorse!  She is amazing and soooo helpful. I couldn’t do my chair’s work without her help, for transfer and just about everything else. Nobody knows as much about our programs and history as she does. She’s simply essential.I can’t express my enthusiastic support enough. She deserves the highest awards."

 

It is for these reasons that I proudly nominate Erica for the SNS Impact Award. 

   Donna Jaramillo-Fellin, nominated by Ernie Costello

Donna has been a key reason why SNS has been able to continue it's teaching mission through the pandemic. While being short 3 career positions over much of the last year, Donna has maintained support for 12 instructional lab rooms across 2 buildings (with a 3rd -BSP - added this spring). Added to the difficulties faced during the pandemic of remote labs, she las led her team through the difficulties of moving Chemistry Labs into and then back out of BSP when it was shut down by the Office of the State Fire Marshal, as well as flooding in SE1 that damaged two Physics Labs. 

 

This spring, Donna helped lead the campus back into BSP by enabling a Physics SPARK Seminar, which was the first instructional use of the new BSP Building. Donna also coordinates the course fee adjustment process, is helping design the chemistry lab for the new Med Ed building, 

 

Through all of this, Donna keeps a positive outlook and leads her team with passion and compassion. She is greatly deserving of the recognition of an SNS Impact Award.  

   Jan Zarate, nominated by Paul Roberts

Jan has taken the initiative to work with colleagues at various levels to solve problems, improve work processes, and achieve campus goals. Jan used her institutional knowledge from graduate programs and enrollment management to assist the Health Science Research Institute’s (HSRI) Grants Manager and Research Administrator understand a complex issue. SNS has two students who are the PIs for their own grant funding (NIH F-31 fellowships). These awards include a fellowship payment and research funds for the student. Both students had complex issues with refunds, returns and incorrect accounting on the grant. Jan arranged a meeting (in place of Graduate Funding) to help interpret the student account and reconcile it with the grant funding. She extensively reviewed the students billing account and explained the transactions as it pertained to the fellowship payout and accounting.  This was a complex process that clarified issues for the students and training for the RA on what to look for in the future. Additionally, Jan was essential to the success of UC Merced’s and the School of Natural Sciences’ 2022 Virtual Graduate Visitation and In-Person Graduate Visitation. She collaborated with Graduate Division, Graduate Group Chairs, faculty, and graduate support staff to ensure UC Merced’s premiere graduate student recruitment event was a great success.

  Jenn Souza, nominated by Erica Roberts

We all wear many hats as part of our work.  Besides her academic and pre-health advising duties, Jenn manages the course articulation process for our School, which involves collecting course syllabi from students and Admissions for faculty review, tracking decisions and communicating decisions broadly. 

 

There are many moving parts to the process beyond data tracking, including gently nudging faculty to do their reviews, but Jenn handles it beautifully.  She's successfully built relationships with the SNS faculty reviewers and articulation staff in the Office of Admissions.  Most recently, she has learned how to use the TES system for submission and tracking of reviews.  This was no small feat as it took several years to just gain access and establish the workflow.  Additionally, she has been in communication with PHYS and CHEM to implement the use of C-IDs to fast track articulation of courses at the California community colleges.  The proposed use of C-IDs is a direct result of her strong collaboration with the Articulation Officer in the Office of Admission.  When implemented, this will tremendously reduce the number of courses our faculty will need to manually review which will allow for happier faculty and faster decisions for students.  

 

It's important to note this work does not only impact SNS students but students across all majors taking our courses.  I greatly appreciate Jenn's dedication to this task and the creativity she has brought to the table.

  Chee Lee, nominated by Josephine Vang and endorsed by Dora Lopes

It is my absolute pleasure to nominate Chee Lee for this extraordinary SNS Impact Award.

 

In the short three and a half years that she has been in SNS, Chee has shown resilience in many areas, excelled in projects she works on, and continues to prove her value and impact on the SNS Personnel team, school and campus.

 

Hiring one single faculty is no small feat.  A huge factor that goes into hiring a faculty includes coordinating the candidate’s visit/interview.  This involves navigating campus resources (such as catering, IT, conference room reservations, parking reservations, to name a few) and coordinating travel schedules with faculty candidates from all over the country to schedule up to a 2-day interviews each candidate with various folks on campus.  So, imagine coordinating 98+ faculty candidate interviews right before or during the pandemic!  In the past four years, Chee has been instrumental in communicating with 5 department chairs, no less than 90 faculty across 5 academic departments, countless students and administrative staff, to plan and execute 100+ in-person, virtual and hybrid faculty candidate visits.  Sometimes, these visits were requested with only one- or two-weeks’ notices, and there were many times visits overlapped.  Regardless of the amount of notice (or lack thereof), Chee manages to coordinate these visits with the greatest of attention and poise, to ensure a smooth, positive experience for candidates as well as those from campus.  Chee’s much-appreciated hard work has successfully contributed to hiring 23 new faculty in the past four years.  She also goes above and beyond to ensure that our new faculty hires are properly onboarded.

 

Chee is the school’s go-to person for hiring undergraduate students.  She has hired countless student assistants for the school’s staff and faculty.  She has even helped hire students on a grant that some SNS faculty received.  The students hired on this grant currently work with SATAL on STEM/bio education research, which involves students from all over campus.  Another exciting achievement of hers is creation of the UG student recruitment manual for the school.  Our team has always had to contact others from various departments on campus to find out how to hire student assistants.  Through these experiences, Chee created and solidified a Student Hiring Process Manual, which helps identify each action needed in the recruitment process, employment change requests, and other processes until the student’s last day of work.  The development of this manual will be an ongoing process, but our team’s plan is to make it available online within the next year, and to share respective steps and/or checklists from the manual with staff and faculty who are looking to hire student assistants, which will make it easier to navigate the student assistant hiring processes.

 

Chee regularly coordinates with those within SNS and across campus (such as, SNS Curriculum, IT, APO, CGA and CBS2, to name a few) to schedule monthly Learn at Lunch sessions for new and existing faculty.  These monthly sessions are effective in helping faculty retain information they need to know on how to support their research, teaching and navigating the UC system overall.  Faculty are very excited for these sessions and look forward to the next one.

 

Anyone who has worked with Chee will agree that she treats everyone with kindness and a smile, and I am so happy to have her on my team!

   Karina Villegas, nominated by Mireille Smith

I would like to nominate Karina Villegas for the SNS Impact award. Karina is widely known as the “go-to” person for all administrative, procurement (ServiceNow, Bobcat Buy/Oracle) and travel processes (CONCUR), not just in SNS, but across campus. Due to the startup problems and continued difficulties with the new Alpha Financial/Oracle systems, Karina has spearheaded ways to overcome these problems to ensure that transactions are approved, accounts are accurately charged, and policies are followed. While there are many reasons why I believe Karina deserves this award, I’d like to point out two. First, Karina’s process improvements have been so effective, she took it upon herself to share them with other campus units including SSHA, SOE, SNRI, HSRI, Travel Office, Grad Division, and CBS2 to help streamline their processes too. These efforts included providing an overview and specific training to new CBS2 analysts on science faculty needs and types of transactions. Second, UCM experienced a significant system failure that prevented the automatic FAU conversion to CCOA in GLAAS (Graduate and Lecturer Academic Appointment System). While this failure was not Karina’s responsibility to address and fix, she stepped up to manually convert over 150 accounts from FAU to CCOA so the Grad group could process GSA and TA hires, enabling this time sensitive and important process to be completed despite the system failures. The implementation of new University-wide technology systems is vital for the long-term success of UCM; these implementations cannot happen without the day-to-day know-how and support of the team who uses them. Karina has proven to play a vital role in ensuring the School of Natural Sciences continues to function during this transition. SNS faculty has experienced major disruption in their ability to access, review, and order from their accounts, which caused significant frustration. Karina is committed to assist Faculty with their portfolios and met with each faculty member to assist them to understand the good, the bad and the ugly with their portfolios, and has helped them accomplish their research missions by providing an extensive shadow system to allow them to estimate their account balances. Her efforts have not gone un-noticed; many faculty members have gone out of their way to compliment Karina’s hard work, calm demeaner, and pleasant eagerness to always be there to help.

  Paul Roberts, nominated by Angie Salinas

There are many reasons why I believe Paul deserves the SNS Impact Award. I would like to take this opportunity to highlight a couple of them. First, Paul's commitment to our graduate students and faculty. Second is Paul's commitment to efficiency and process. The past two years have brought quite a bit of change to the Graduate Team. However, notwithstanding the pandemic, many other obstacles were presented to the team. The passing of Rita in 2020, vacancies of the graduate coordinator in 2021, and the medical leave of another, also in 2021. These vacancies have left Paul with little to work with, yet he and his team of 2! has persevered. Paul has delivered services to graduate students and faculty in an outstanding fashion during the last year. He has carried the load of two vacant positions while at the same time continuing his duties. First, he managed to pull off the SNS 2021 Virtual Graduate Visitation Weekend (VGVW). This is UC Merced's premier graduate student recruitment event, where all academic, recruiting, and graduate events were required to be held virtually in response to the pandemic. In addition, he oversaw the School of Natural Sciences Graduate Orientation Week (GROW). He led the school's transition of all orientation events to remote access. These transitions included the school's main presentation to a recorded session allowing students online access at any time, and several presentations, workshops, and training to Live Zoom events. It has been shared with me numerous times throughout the pandemic how Paul has shown leadership and collegiality. The faculty have commended his dedication to supporting graduate students. At the same time, his colleagues continue to be impressed by his constant showing up and getting the work done. As his manager, I'm proud of how he has led his team. His efforts to support his team and support his colleagues and faculty have been nothing short of phenomenal. Things are looking up for our Graduate Programs. I'm confident that Paul will continue to lead with dedication. Still, without the hard work and commitment that Paul has put into his job, the successes described above would not be possible. Paul, thank you for all you do.