During Wednesday’s Staff Town Hall, I had the opportunity to announce the 2021 Dean’s Excellence Awards, which recognized three Mendoza teams whose hard work and dedication were truly exceptional. In today’s message, I am sharing the award announcements again for faculty members and those staff members who weren’t able to attend the Staff Town Hall.'

Dean’s Excellence Award for Integration: MSA Enrollment Success
This award is presented to a cross-functional team who have worked together to accomplish a goal or complete a project that is in line with the vision, mission and priorities of the College.
Congratulations to the following marketing and MSA team members: Colleen Cota, Heather DeCourval, Phil Drendall, Lucas Eggers, Dave Grundy, Helen High, Amanda Jacobson, Cathi Kennedy, Santhosh Lakkaraju, Shane McCoy, Lisa Michaels, JR Nemelka and Kellie Rzepka.
This team put in an amazing effort to turn around the enrollment in our Master of Science in Accountancy program (working closely with professors Jim Seida, Sandra Vera-Muñoz and Kristen Collett-Schmitt), including consistent outreach to prospective students and innovative marketing to increase awareness and to build content for underrepresented populations and women. Because of their efforts, the team was able to increase created applications by 26% and submitted applications by 56%, which resulted in a projected enrollment substantially above the current enrollment.

Dean’s Excellence Award for Elevation: Mendoza IT for its support of the Mendoza community during the COVID-19 pandemic
This award is presented to a team that has shown exemplary accomplishment toward a significant achievement through innovative thinking.
Congratulations to the Mendoza IT team of Chris Fruehwirth, Hank Gettinger, David Hardman, Ryan Hudson, Jerry Kickul, Ryan Kraszyk, Frank Mark, Jeremy May, Nick Page, Jim Spencer, David Yeh and Kyle Way.
The start of the pandemic brought Mendoza’s normal operations to a halt. As we quickly adapted to a new virtual environment, Mendoza IT made sure that everyone could get the help and instruction they needed. The IT staff answered a very large volume of chats, phone calls and emails from faculty, staff and students across Mendoza — with compassion, patience and efficiency. The members of the IT team were regularly in the building and on call in order to ensure that the College remained operational.

Dean’s Excellence Award for Elevation: Mendoza Faculty Support Team for its support to the Mendoza community during the COVID-19 pandemic
The third award also recognizes a team that has shown exemplary accomplishment. Congratulations to Faculty Support staff members Rachel Karnafel, Maggie Neenan-Michel, Denayia Phillips, Amy Spangler and Tami Springer.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, the Faculty Support Team has exemplified a positive, servant attitude. The team remained on campus, quickly adjusting to safety protocols and serving as a source of steadfast support to Mendoza faculty, staff and students. They assumed extra responsibilities such as distributing face masks, ordering sanitizing supplies and picking up and dropping off packages at the mail distribution center. During a time of great upheaval, Faculty Support has been an unwavering source of support to the whole Mendoza community.

Please join me in congratulating all of these award recipients. I am so very grateful to all of them!

In Notre Dame,

Martijn