Alex Galantis
I was struggling to update an important spreadsheet document. I asked Alex to take a look since I know he is a semi-pro with Excel. He did and had many questions as to what I was trying to accomplish. Through his questions, I realized I did not give out the right information in an organized manner. He assisted me in “revamping” the entire document to where it is easily readable and extremely informative, highlighting the emphasis needed for the project. Thanks to his insight, I felt much better passing on this polished document! Kudos to Alex!!
– Cherie Galantis
Richard Jackson
I could write much about how Richard embodies each of the ITS values: communication, integrity, innovation, respect, and teamwork; but I’ll strive to be succinct. Richard has consistently gone above and beyond with regards to the MESA migration project over the past yest, but I’m submitting this VTTC nomination directly in relation to his most recent work in identifying a permission mis-configuration which allowed individuals to continue to use the Mason MyData (M:) shares after this data was migrated to OneDrive. Not only did Richard quickly identify the root cause, but he also had the foresight to decommission the MESA hardware in a tiered manner which could account for these edge cases. He’s been leading the charge with getting orphaned data to end-users who are submitting tickets. Additionally, he’s been courteous and timely in all communications with these users who otherwise would have lost this M: drive data. His teamwork and commitment to seeing the MESA migration project completed in a professional and secure manner is nothing short of exemplary. I’m fortunate to have worked with Richard on this project.
– J.D. Sayle
Mindy Stawarz
Innovation, Integrity and Teamwork: Mindy Stawarz has done a great job developing integrations for the highly complex multi-year RAMP project. She has worked tirelessly to integrate the Mason ERP system, Banner, with the RAMP modules. Thanks to Mindy’s efforts, Banner sources Human Resources and Organizational information for Personnel, Students, Departments and Sponsors. RAMP Grants sends Grants, Awards, and Award Budget information data to Banner. Banner provides feedback files to RAMP for the success or errors from the award integration. Award Budget Modification Information integration was particularly complex, and Mindy worked tirelessly with the Office of Sponsored Programs staff to analyze, develop, and test the interface. The results of Mindy’s efforts have provided significant efficiencies for the OSP staff and beyond. She is continuing to develop integrations from Banner for Person Effort Allocations to provide data for the Payroll Certification process. Throughout all of this effort, Mindy has worked diligently to ensure accuracy of the information, and she has worked collaboratively with the customers and the vendor to provide innovative solutions that are benefitting the entire research community at George Mason.
– Maribeth Luftglass
Kathy Bine
Teamwork: Kathy Bine has done a great job coordinating with multiple ITS offices, Human Resources, the Office of Research, the Office of Sponsored Programs, the Office of Risk, Safety, and Resilience, and the vendor Huron, to analyze and implement a new integration of training information from CITI and MasonLEAPS into RAMP. Researchers are subject to a variety of federally mandated research compliance training requirements. The RAMP system suite, with its multiple research compliance modules (COI, Safety, IRB, and IACUC), afforded a new opportunity to consolidate the tracking and reporting of training completion records. As such, RAMP now includes a multi-stage research training data integration that went live in September. MasonLEAPS, which is Mason’s Learning, Evaluation, and Performance System, receives a nightly data feed of completion records from CITIProgram.org online courses (Human Subjects, Animal Care & Use, Responsible Conduct of Research). These CITI course records are combined with local completion records from courses in MasonLEAPS (Lab Safety, Export Control) into a comprehensive nightly data feed from MasonLEAPS into RAMP. Once in RAMP, each module displays only those research records specific to its compliance area (e.g., human subjects trainings display in RAMP IRB). RAMP also supports system-wide reporting on training completion records across all research compliance areas.
Thanks to Kathy’s efforts, this overall data integration facilitates timely, at-a-glance verification of compliance with training requirements, as well as greatly augments the capacity of several George Mason offices to track and monitor training completions.
– Maribeth Luftglass
Lori Polnow
Lori’s experience and attention to detail are awesome. Several changes were made to resolve some of the issues seen during the first registration time slot for classes. The most meaningful change was most likely made by Lori, when she saw and responded to sessions that were not being cleared from the database. She proactively downgraded the software version used on the servers that were handling the course registration processes, resulting in a much better outcome for the registration time slots that followed. Kudos to Lori!!!!
– Sandy Winter
Matthew Berlejung
Some Costello College of Business (CCB) users lost access to files after unknowingly allowing a SharePoint site to expire. These were files that they needed for a leadership event two days later. Matt immediately prioritized helping us restore the site so we could access the files. Matt has an excellent sense of what customers need in the moment, which is much appreciated, especially during time-sensitive situations like this one. He is always exceedingly polite and professional in his communications. Thank you, Matt!
– Kathi Gelona