The Libraries selects annual Student Awards winners

Each school year, the Libraries recognizes some of its many exemplary student workers with its Student Awards. The Libraries held a ceremony on April 20 to honor its award-winners with short speeches about their accomplishments and to name the winners of the 2022 Above & Beyond and Outstanding Student of the Year awards. The event is sponsored by the Libraries' Student Assistant Program Committee.

Ash, who works in the Libraries Administration office, was chosen as Student Assistant of the Year. Their work ethic and warmth were lauded by nominators, who noted that Ash takes initiative and volunteers for work that needs to get done. 

“Ash has a wonderful personality and greets everyone with a smile,” says Kristen Rivers, University Program Associate. “They assist lost students or employees. If we need them to assist other departments, they jump in to help out.”

“Having worked with student assistants for the past almost eight years, I can honestly say that Ash is one of the best student assistants who has ever worked with us in Administration/Libraries Human Resources,” says Nellie Maurer, Human Resources Specialist. “After well over a year of being remote, we had a large backlog of filing, organizing, and cleaning up. Ash organizes like no other. They took our mess of a supply closet and made it nearly Netflix worthy.”

Sheariah Stevens, who works in the Libraries’ Open Knowledge Center, received an Above & Beyond Award. Among the higher-level tasks she’s taken on, Sheariah gave a solo presentation to the Faculty Senate informing them about Open Educational Resources and the opportunities to engage with them at the Libraries. 

“Sheariah represented the Libraries faultlessly and her presentation was clearly engaging to faculty, some of whom may go on to work with our Alt-Textbook Project,” says David Tully, Librarian for Student Success & Affordability. “A few weeks before, Sheariah worked with our Development team, appearing on camera in a series of donor-specific videos to say thanks for their major gifts on Day of Giving. Sheariah was able to truly articulate the impact which giving has upon student affordability and her content allowed us to better demonstrate the Libraries' appreciation of our donors.”

Another Above & Beyond Award went to Selene Schmittling in Data & Visualization Services. As the Libraries’ inaugural Lead Data Science Consultant, she handled questions that no one else could answer and stepped in on short notice to lead two Python Open Labs when the Libraries was short-staffed.

“We knew we could count on Selene to do this because of her passion for instruction and her thoughtful approach to pedagogy,” says Mike Nutt, Data Experience Manager. “Selene’s willingness to help often leads her into unfamiliar topics, but she sees these problems as an opportunity to learn instead of a daunting task. She has helped streamline our operations, as she did with our help request system for which she devised and implemented a labeling system to assign and categorize help requests.”