Head Physician, Student Health Clinic
Division of Student Success

Dr. Azonobi has been a hero during the pandemic. As chief physician for the GSU Student Health Clinic, she has been the point person for our campus planning in COVID-19 prevention and testing protocols. She not only developed protocols for the monitoring and testing of campus members, she has been at the front lines of our day-to-day efforts: hiring and supervising contract tracers, implementing surveillance testing in University Housing, securing medical supplies, and interacting with state health agencies. Because of her efforts, Georgia State is a considerably safer place to be, and the university has been able to deliver courses uninterrupted this fall.

Nominator: Timothy Renick

Professor and Director of the Center for Microbial Pathogenesis in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences (IBMS), Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar
Institute for Biomedical Sciences

Dr. Christopher Basler has emerged as a leading researcher at Georgia State University during the COVID-19 crisis. Shortly after the novel coronavirus outbreak occurred, he procured samples of the virus to understand how the virus functions to counteract our immune defenses.

Using strategies and lessons learned from his work with the Ebola virus, Basler is identifying candidate therapeutics that inhibit genome replication of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. He has already made valuable contributions to the research community, including publication of methods to inactivate SARS-CoV-2 that make the virus non-infectious and allow safe study.

Given the importance of these studies, Basler has successfully competed for extramural funding. He received a $100,000 COVID-19 Fast Grant to study enzymes that are critical for the replication of SARS-CoV-2. He has also been awarded $50,000 to investigate virus genetic variation and antibody responses against SARS-CoV-2 in patients in Georgia, in partnership with Augusta University.

Nominator: Jian-Dong Li

Associate Vice President for Student Financial Services
Division of Student Success

Upon the announcement that Georgia State was moving entirely online in March, James Blackburn and Michael Sanseviro worked collaboratively to develop a highly effective, first-of-its-kind model for the distribution of emergency aid to Georgia State students. Through the platforms that they developed, Georgia State students have received more than 38,000 individual emergency grants totaling $23 million since March. While many campuses sat on CARES Act dollars that were intended by Congress to be delivered to students as soon as possible, Georgia State was able to distribute more than $13 million in funds in the first 24 hours of receiving the monies from the federal government and can often reply to a student’s request for aid within 24 hours. Dr. Sanseviro and Mr. Blackburn have helped tens of thousands of Georgia State financially since the start of the pandemic.

Nominator: Timothy Renick

Director, Study Abroad Programs
Office of International Initiatives

At the onset of the Pandemic, Laura led the evacuation of over 70 Georgia State students who were then studying abroad in over 20 different countries. She monitored COVID-19 and advised nervous students abroad and nervous parents back home as it began to spread across the globe, providing helpful FAQs and taking numerous Zoom calls with students around the clock. She trouble-shot and provided solutions to ensure their safe return home, helping them to find flights back to the United States and connecting them with other campus units to answer questions about academic progression and accommodation. Her dedication to the safety of our students and to making them feel supported required around the clock attention due to time zone differences and her actions most certainly make her worthy of being in the GSU Hall of Fame.

Nominator: Wolfgang F. Schlör

Sr. Director of Student Success Analytics
Division of Student Success

Ben Brandon is an unsung hero of the last six months, informing Georgia State’s decision-making processes through providing real-time data to GSU leadership on a daily basis. When it was announced in March that students across the USG were to be asked to leave university housing, Ben implemented a chatbot campaign to discover which GSU students had no safe place to go, getting thousands of responses from students within hours and allowing hundreds of students to remain in housing. He was instrumental in Georgia State’s pivot to more online offerings this fall when he reported in July on data showing a significant shift away from face-to-face courses by tracking GSU students’ preferences in real-time. In multiple instances in recent months, the data that Ben produced in the morning was in President Becker’s hands by afternoon and, at times, additionally informed the decision making of Chancellor Wrigley.

Nominator: Timothy Renick

Assistant Director of Benefits
Unit of Payroll, Benefits and HRIS

Quinyata Cameron-Mallard provides benefits administration and consultation services for employees, retirees, and their dependents.

In the past months, GSU has experienced difficult times due to the COVID-19 virus. Quinyata, was quick to provide individual, departmental, and management assistance around the execution of responses to COVID-19. Quinyata managed the complex issues and inquiries associated with the various leave options available to employees who were faced with the need to balance financial and personal needs.  Quinyata created a leave matrix that provided clarity on which leave options were available to employees based on the complex nature of their requests.  This matrix also aided managers in managing workplace concerns.

Quinyata spent many long hours answering employee and manager questions; and providing updates and guidance to key administrators.  Her willingness to assist and her commitment has had a tremendous impact on GSU’s response to COVID-19.

 

Nominators: Linda J. Nelson and Robert Elmore

Director, Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL)
Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning & Online Education

Laura took on a massive load with planning and delivering Mastering Online Teaching (MOT) sessions for nearly 3000 instructors in Spring and Summer 2020. As a result, GSU instructors are far better prepared to develop and teach online classes. The improved quality of course design and instruction will enhance learning experiences for students. In addition, Laura contributed substantially to the Keep Teaching plan for Fall and has remained available to help instructors with their questions and concerns regarding the blended learning model.

Nominator: Kim Siegenthaler

Application Developer Lead
Instructional Innovation and Technology (Strat Init. & Dev.)

In late March, the university registrar inquired about the possibility of getting an application to facilitate emergency course withdrawals outside of the regular registration processes. On April 1, 2020, a solution was launched. It allowed students to request a withdrawal from their courses, pulled relevant information from Banner, facilitated the flow of the requests between students, advisors, Financial Aid, Office of the Registrar. It provided real-time dashboards visualizing the withdrawal operation and automatically sent out daily reports via GSU Send-a-file.

Jeremiah Langner and Eduardo Covarrubias took four days to design, implement, test, and launch the solution. It was deployed between April 1 and April 17, and it processed 3,965 emergency withdrawal submissions.

 

Nominator: Phil Ventimiglia

Director of the CEHD Office of Technology & Systems Support
College: College of Education & Human Development

Sam Daniel is a key individual responsible for the quick turn to online education in the Spring and assurance of continuing capacity into the Summer and Fall. He leads the design, implementation, and monitoring of our IT response. He coordinated the purchase and deployment of iPad, PC, VPNs, cameras, and other hardware to assure the faculty’s ability to teach and conduct research. Sam and his team spent countless hours prepping hardware with the necessary upgrades and software to provide mobile and offsite services and then met with faculty individually to instruct them so they could set them up in their homes. All this while mitigating the chance of contamination from viruses of humans and of hardware. He and his team designed and provided online short-classes for faculty and students around Webex, Teams, Captera, and Zoom, etc. This summer, he created and staffed a new entity for faculty to provide ongoing support in person, by phone, and online. This fall, he replicated this to support students as they encounter challenges.

 

Nominator: Paul Alberto

Director, Research and Environmental Safety Programs
Economic Research and Development

Dr. Daniely has been instrumental in advancing our COVID-19 testing, public service, and research objectives. As Director of Research and Environmental Programs, she has been responsible for assuring the biosafety requirements for our coronavirus testing efforts, both for Georgia State students, as well as for the general public. Working collaboratively with laboratory scientists, Danielle has assured safe working conditions for the transport and analysis of coronavirus samples to our virology facilities. Dr. Daniely has also supported our unprecedented research efforts to better understand the coronavirus itself. Currently, four faculty members are studying the coronavirus in our BSL4 laboratory facility. Assuring the coordination, training, and biosafety of four faculty and their research teams in one relatively small high containment facility is no small task. Dr. Daniely has accomplished it with both grace and acumen.

Nominator: Michael Eriksen

Assistant Director, Office of Academic Assistance
College of the Arts, Deans Office 

Tony Davis seamlessly transitioned to working from home, trained a new administrative assistant almost entirely virtually, temporarily took on the workload of one of the undergraduate advisors who left the university during the pandemic, and is currently doing the job of the administrative assistant and conducting a search for a new one since the administrative assistant he trained this spring has recently been hired in the advisor position. Most importantly, in his role as college scheduler, he has worked tirelessly with the schools in the college and with the dean’s office as summer classes were moved online, as fall classes were scheduled in three different modalities, and as the decision was made for the spring schedule to follow suit. A true problem solver, he regularly catches scheduling issues and works to resolve them. In addition, he is always positive, collegial, and focused on doing what is best for COTA students.

 

Nominator: Wade Weast

Director of Information Systems and Technology
J. Mack Robinson College of Business

Terry led the RCB’s College Technology Services through not only a rapid transition to online teaching this spring but also through bringing online the new simulcast classrooms for use by both the RCB and GSU community on the 11th floor of 55 Park Place. Often staying right by a faculty member’s side while using a brand new technology stack in our Robinson Digital Boardroom, Terry and his team went well beyond the call of duty to ensure that RCB faculty and students had a good experience with the new simulcast classrooms and that they received state of the art online and virtual delivery of coursework. This meant lots of early mornings, late nights, and lots of firefighting under rapidly changing circumstances. Terry deserves commendation for his leadership and commitment to the RCB and GSU community.

Nominator: Rich Phillips

Lead Instructional Designer
Andrew Young School of Policy Studies

Ms. Eveland developed and promoted consistent online course development for AYSPS faculty, PTIs, and graduate teaching assistants. She organized and provided regular programming to help move AYSPS courses into a consistent format that would reduce student stress regarding online courses. Ms. Eveland found innovative ways to infuse videos, interesting subject matter, and assessments that increase engagement of the students. Throughout the period (March-August), she was always available for additional help and troubleshooting. We could not have done it without her (and Cynthia Searcy).

Nominator: Sally Wallace

Principal Senior Lecturer
College of the Arts/Welch School of Art and Design

It’s hard to imagine the School of Art and Design could have successfully navigated the transition in modalities that COVID-19 demanded without the tireless work of Tim Flowers. In his role as Undergraduate Coordinator, Tim oversees class scheduling for the school. He was responsive and proactive in meeting the needs of our college, school, and faculty in the quickly changing academic landscape, continually adjusting classes as required. He recruited new instructors well into summer to teach courses to meet unmet demand. He assisted with technical support and academic resources. To ease the impact of delays in the hiring process, Tim was a conduit for communication with students until the instructors were successfully entered into the system. He was active in assisting students with registration, often guiding them to the appropriate class/modality to fit their individual needs. And finally, he did all this with a great deal of good humor and collegiality.

Nominator: Wade Weast

Data Administrator
School of Public Health

As a Data Administrator within the School of Public Health, Mr. Heath has taken on significant additional responsibilities to coordinate all university-wide data management, analysis, and reporting for the GSU campus testing and surveillance plan. Through his contributions, Georgia State University is able to prioritize the health and safety of students, faculty, staff, and visitors while continuing to support crucial in-person activities.

Nominator: Rodney Lyn

Facilities Coordinator
University Library

We want to recognize Wes Hughes’ resiliency, flexibility, professionalism, and commitment to serving the students, faculty, and staff. Wes has taken extraordinary measures to help maintain our library facilities, assisting with new services, and ensuring the safety of all of us. Wes’ can-do attitude during these unique times has been nothing short of inspiring. We are humbled to work alongside such a dedicated team member and appreciate his continued commitment to serve the GSU community. Wes coordinated the installation of additional barriers at our service points, the distribution of PPE resources, and the reduction of seating to comply with CDC social distancing recommendations. In addition, he worked closely with our housekeeping team to coordinate our COVID related efforts to keep our facilities safe and clean.

Nominator: Jeff Steely

Director of Employee Relations
Human Resources

Monica Javia serves as an advisor and assesses the needs of managers and employees to develop plans to resolve highly complex issues within the work environment.

In the past months, Georgia State has experienced difficult times due to the COVID-19 virus. Monica jumped in headfirst to help with initiatives around the execution of responses to COVID-19. Monica, along with another colleague, developed a Q&A box where employees and managers could ask the many complex questions around workplace issues that were being experienced.

She managed and supported various aspects of new policies and procedures to make ease of work for employees.

Despite the overwhelming amount of work, she consistently found ways to be of service, working well into the evenings and weekends on many occasions. Her willingness to assist and her commitment has had a tremendous impact on Georgia State’s response to COVID-19.

Nominator: Linda J. Nelson

Application Developer Lead
Instructional Innovation and Technology (App Design & Development)

In late March, the university registrar inquired about the possibility of getting an application to facilitate emergency course withdrawals outside of the regular registration processes. On April 1, 2020, a solution was launched. It allowed students to request a withdrawal from their courses, pulled relevant information from Banner, facilitated the flow of the requests between students, advisors, Financial Aid, Office of the Registrar. It provided real-time dashboards visualizing the withdrawal operation and automatically sent out daily reports via GSU Send-a-file.

Jeremiah Langner and Eduardo Covarrubias took four days to design, implement, test, and launch the solution. It was deployed between April 1 and April 17, and it processed 3,965 emergency withdrawal submissions.

Nominator: Phil Ventimiglia

Associate Professor of Marketing
J. Mack Robinson College of Business

At the outset of the Covid-19 crisis, Dean Phillips appointed Ritu to organize a coalition of Robinson experts to provide support to the college faculty in their conversion to online teaching. Within 24 hours, she created and launched the RCB Digital Support Network (DSN) — a task force of faculty and RCB Technology Services personnel — to mentor faculty members to deliver their courses online. Under Ritu’s leadership, the DSN team built the RCB Instructional Technology Support Portal in iCollege to serve as a one-stop location for information that faculty could immediately use to develop online instruction materials. Ritu and the team also provided several in-person and online instructional workshops and were available for one-on-one support. Ritu made sure that the concerns and questions of each faculty member were addressed in a very responsive manner, even on evenings and weekends, either by her or other members of her team.

Nominator: Rich Phillips

Clinical Associate Professor
Byrdine F. Lewis College of Nursing and Health Professions, Department of Physical Therapy.

Dr. Anne Lorio is an excellent teacher who is loved by all our students. Dr. Lorio worked tirelessly over the past two semesters converting her courses to be delivered either fully online or using the blended learning model. She has done interactive videos that allow students to learn hands-on skills in Physical Therapy, which helps students learn how to treat individuals with neurological disorders. Dr. Lorio also designed a study on student perceptions of online learning is record time. Got it IRB approved, and we had 117 respondents to the survey out of 125 Doctor of Physical Therapy students, providing the Department with valuable data to plan for summer and fall semesters and future online programs. Dr. Lorio’s study has now been submitted for review and will soon be published as a peer-reviewed manuscript in an educational journal.

Nominator: Huanbiao Mo

Interim Dean, School of Public Health

Dr. Lyn made a significant contribution to the university-wide effort to meet the challenges of COVID-19. He led a team of faculty experts providing guidance on public health guidelines affecting universities and helped to create a comprehensive testing plan for campus. Dr. Lyn’s work allowed Georgia State to keep our commitment to staying safe while staying true to our core missions of top-quality education and research.

Nominator: Wendy Hensel

Director of Graduate Admissions
The Graduate School

I would like to recognize Lita Malveaux for effectively working with staff and faculty in all colleges/schools (with the exception of Law) to ensure that admissions processes were responsive to the ever evolving needs of our applicants and faculty.

Nominator: Lisa Armistead

Assistant Dean for Academic Success
College of Arts & Sciences

Mr. Medlock is the assistant dean in charge of college course scheduling, student and faculty data processing and analysis, and support for academic success. During the pandemic, he managed the scheduling and frequent scheduling changes for approximately 4500 course sections. As the pandemic continued to unfold, he single-handedly went back to 22 department chairs and directors, and working with the Registrar to change schedules, creating blended and online schedules. He also supported department chairs in shifting sections and growing enrollments with reduction in hundreds of limited term faculty instructors due to the cuts to our budget. He prepared data analytics for the dean’s office to help make scheduling and budgeting decisions so that we could meet our enrollment responsibilities while at the same time cutting costs. Throughout all of this, he has been unflappable, always providing steady and consistent support to the department chairs.

Nominator: Sara Rosen

Department Head, User Services & Technology Support
University Library

Kara Mullen has handled the many challenges of operating a large library during a pandemic with resourcefulness, hard work, and a cool head. She embodies the GSU can-do spirit. When students returned to the Atlanta campus this fall, they found a library with the same great services they had come to expect, plus new and enhanced services to make their lives easier and safer. Kara successfully developed our Curbside Pickup service available to students, faculty, and staff to pick up their library materials without having to come into the building or even leave the safety of their car. Working closely with our web group, she streamlined the library website to highlight the essential services needed most during a pandemic. In addition, working closely with Student Financial Services, she removed the library from any money-collecting transactions, developing a safer process whereby students take care of financial obligations through the central PantherPay portal.

Nominator: Jeff Steely

Director of Sports Medicine
Athletics

I nominate Bob, representing his staff comprising Dinika Johnson, Amanda Hawkins, Tim Adams, Shannon Hendricks, Austin Moore, Shawn Pacifico, Hannah Reich, Kelsey Russo, Michael Theile, Rachel Barfield, Nick Dooley, Amber Griffin, and Xia Howard, for their tireless work this spring and summer to create Covid protocols and testing guidelines that allow our athletics teams to compete this fall.

Nominator: Charlie Cobb

Project Coordinator
The Graduate School

Dori Neptune pulled together an incredible virtual orientation and effectively moved all of the Graduate School’s Professional Development workshops and seminars online without dropping any of our offerings.

Nominator: Lisa Armistead

Assistant Professor
Department of Population Health Sciences
School of Public Health

As an expert in biostatistics, Dr. Nielsen significantly contributed to Georgia State University’s pandemic response by providing technical and analytic guidance to establish the GSU testing and surveillance plan. Dr. Nielsen also provided a daily review of campus COVID-19 testing and surveillance data to monitor infections and to alert university leaders of potential outbreaks. Through her contributions, Georgia State University is able to prioritize the health and safety of students, faculty, staff, and visitors while continuing to support crucial in-person activities.

Nominator: Rodney Lyn

Research Development Specialist
Finance and Administration – Perimeter College

Glenn quickly responded to the COVID-19 related budget crisis by seeking external funding to support the continuation of strategic activities. Not only did Glenn successfully identified opportunities to refocus existing grant funding (due to changes in federal guidelines), he also identified other CARES Act funding opportunities that provided funding to support GSU. Glenn leveraged his expertise, creativity and relationships across GSU and beyond to provide critical funding that helped to offset deep state budget funding cuts allowing GSU and Perimeter to continue to execute their core academic missions. While these efforts were “heroic”, they do not come as a surprise as Glenn routinely goes above and beyond the call of duty to support GSU’s academic mission through external funding to support student outcomes. It is impossible to overstate the impact of Glenn efforts during this time of crisis and the difference his efforts have made to continue several of our important support programs.

Nominator: Jamie Smith

Dean of Students
Division of Student Success

Upon the announcement that Georgia State was moving entirely online in March, James Blackburn and Michael Sanseviro worked collaboratively to develop a highly effective, first-of-its-kind model for the distribution of emergency aid to Georgia State students. Through the platforms that they developed, Georgia State students have received more than 38,000 individual emergency grants totaling $23 million since March. While many campuses sat on CARES Act dollars that were intended by Congress to be delivered to students as soon as possible, Georgia State was able to distribute more than $13 million in funds in the first 24 hours of receiving the monies from the federal government and can often reply to a student’s request for aid within 24 hours. Dr. Sanseviro and Mr. Blackburn have helped tens of thousands of Georgia State financially since the start of the pandemic.

Nominator: Timothy Renick

Senior Academic Professional in Mathematics and Statistics
College of Arts & Sciences

Dr. Sarkar coordinates the Urban Life MILE, which provides core math courses for thousands of students per semester. She has also consulted with the Perimeter campuses as they have begun to develop a MILE. The MILE could not safely operate in this usual fashion, even in a de-densified manner, due to the intense one-on-one support that is provided to students as they have questions or issues in learning the materials. Dr. Sarkar quickly pivoted to test and pilot ways to provide one-on-one instruction in the online space, mimicking the face-to-face process of providing support to students using online platforms that pull students into private chat rooms for detailed support. She worked all spring and summer diligently to prepare and test the approach and has provided seamless support to students throughout the pandemic. She took the lead to work with all MILE instructors, including working with the Commons MILE coordinators.

Nominator: Sara Rosen

Associate Dean for Academic Innovation and Strategy
Andrew Young School of Policy Studies

Dr. Searcy served as mentor, expert, stand-in instructor, teacher, and manager of AYSPS’ online pivot in Spring and Summer 2020. She worked tirelessly with faculty, PTIs, and graduate teaching assistants to help us understand how to move our courses online, infusing quality of instruction with technology. She organized our tutorials and training sessions to discuss the pros and cons of synchronous and asynchronous course delivery, and bring dozens of instructors up to the task of teaching in 2020. On several occasions, she tutored individual instructors long into the day and was on call to help everyone. Dr. Searcy developed readable, consumable information and updates in a timely manner to maintain the momentum of the online transition from March through August. We could not have done it without her (and Mya Eveland).

Nominator: Sally Wallace

College Administrative Officer
Honors College

Karen ensured that our staff members were equipped with devices and supplies needed for smooth transitions to telecommuting. She also made trips to central receiving to retrieve deliveries and distribute them to staff members. She was our college troubleshooter through the early days of the first wave of the pandemic and was here when staff began to return. She was a critical member of our re-opening task force. Karen was the glue that kept our College operations moving despite any obstacle.

Nominator: Sarah Cook

Clinical Associate Professor
College/Division: Byrdine F. Lewis College of Nursing & Health Professions, School of Nursing

Dr. Sims should be in the Hall of Fame for her leadership of the Bachelor of Science in Nursing program during the pivot from traditional face-to-face classes and clinical to a blended model of class and clinical. Nursing moved quickly to online classes and virtual clinical in Spring that has evolved over the Summer into a blend of on-campus skills and simulation labs, virtual clinical, and on-campus and online class sessions. She remained calm and thoughtful in her approaches with faculty, staff, and students. She is a role model in how to best lead others in challenging and unprecedented times.

Nominator: Huanbiao Mo

Clinical Assistant Professor and Associate for Clinical Practice
College College of Education & Human Development

Dr. Carla Tanguay works tirelessly to contact all of the area school districts and has worked with them to understand their individual district platforms and approaches to virtual learning. She has then oriented our faculty and students to the variation across the Metro Atlanta area in terms of remote instruction and helped program coordinators adapt clinical experience assignments and supervision to the digital environment. She investigates best practices in virtual learning in K-12 schools, created tutorials and resources for students and faculty, and is providing professional development for faculty on key approaches to digital instruction.

Nominator: Paul Alberto

Associate Director for Faculty Human Resources
Office of Faculty Affairs

Reid Tankersley was a big help as we drafted the COVID-19 tenure clock stoppage policy, and more importantly, he spent much time responding to faculty questions. I referred all questions to Reid, and he patiently and thoughtfully responded to questions from every faculty and administrator.

Also, the COVID emergency accelerated Reid’s timeline for going paperless in the OFA HR area. He was already participating in the big project of shifting all GSU faculty contracts to online delivery and simultaneously moved other workflows to the online format, all while dealing with the pandemic.

Nominator: Kavita Pandit

Associate Professor of Education/Associate Chair Cultural and Behavioral Science
Culture and Behavioral Science – Perimeter College

Dr. Thomas has the drive, compassion, professionalism and spirit to be a Georgia State University Hall of Fame Champion. During the pandemic, Dr. Thomas was a primary driver to organize faculty to the move online as she immediately compiled a master response plan for all courses. She identified faculty back-ups and collegially created discipline teams for each course. She worked with the College of Education and Human Development to identify and develop viable alternative field placement opportunities for all Perimeter Education students, a process that continued into the Summer and Fall semesters. This summer, she was selected as a Perimeter College Dean’s Fellow for her work with community partners for our education pathway students. Outside of her GSU position, her sewing group “Atlanta Sewing Style” partnered with the Free Wishes Foundation to sew masks for local area hospitals and medical workers.

Nominator: John Redmond

Honors College Academic Advisor
Honors College

Laura led the Honors College Advising Team in their effort to orient new students and create individualized schedules for our 260+ entering first-year students. Of course, this task took place virtually, and Laura had to master WebEx, find lost students in the WebEx system, and herd them to the correct places. The advisors worked over 60 hours a week to accomplish this goal, and Laura provided the leadership necessary. All of our students were successfully registered, oriented, and scheduled with very few problems that she could not overcome by her sheer will.

Nominator: Sarah Cook