NBCS Student Staff Recognition Program

Choosing a Supervisor of the Semester is a difficult task. The supervisors often do many varied and important tasks that they all stand out for one reason or another. But in the end, we must look at the sum total of what the supervisors do to determine a choice. To that end, we have chosen Andrea Fallaha (fallaha) as Supervisor of the Semester for the Livingston Computing Center. Andrea began working in the fall of 2001. She was promoted to Supervisor in Training in the spring of 2002. She then progressed to Assistant Lab supervisor in the fall of 2002 and Lab Supervisor in the fall of 2003. All along the way, she added to the character and energy that defines the Livingston staff. She has remained outspoken about lab policy and management decisions. She actively challenges positions and policies that do not make sense or lack meaning. She backs up her beliefs with logic and reason as well as compassion for the staff. She continually looks after the best interests of the lab and the staff that works there. She has been the glue that keeps the staff, management and consultants, working together toward a common goal. She has been instrumental in developing an effective group that efficiently and enthusiastically provides for the needs of our patrons. Andrea served on the Hiring and the Evaluations committee in the past year. She provided valuable input and help in making the associated endeavors a success. She has been an advocate of new tools for use by the management team to streamline the staff activities and make it more efficient. She is always looking for ways to help the staff perform their jobs better. Given all she has contributed to the lab, it is with great pleasure that we congratulate Andrea Fallaha on a job well done!

Amanda is one of ARC's finest. She's always friendly, thorough and inquisitive. If you're lucky enough to catch her, her smile will brighten your day. With patrons, she's listens attentively to focus on the problem at hand. You can depend on her to fulfill all of her duties to the fullest when she's out there. To top it all off, she asks a lot of questions, and that makes us feel warm inside because we know she truly wants to have things down so she can do her best. Congratulations! {kp}

In his first semester with us, Jeff is showing clear signs of being an excellent consultant. Jeff treats all users with a friendly smile and compliments his excellent customer service skills with strong technical knowledge. When he encounters a situation in which he does not know the answer, not only does he use various lab resources to get the issues resolved, he makes sure that he learns the solution as well. Jeff is a proud addition to the BCCC team. {bm}

Jeff has shown himself to be a dedicated consultant throughout his first semester. In addition to being a pleasure to work with, he always delivers excellent customer service and demonstrates great communication skills when explaining solutions to users and fellow consultants. While on duty, he continually strives to improve his already well developed technical skills. During the semester, Jeff has been a great help when the lab is understaffed. The Busch Management team hopes Jeff keeps up the good work and we look forward to working with him in the future. {mn}

Throughout his time with CCF, Jeff has often had the opportunity to deal with difficult situations. His excellent customer service skills greatly helped him resolve these issue. Be it irate users or ones trying to get around policies, Jeff consistently uses a level-headed approach that indicates his attention to detail yet compassion for truly helping people. During our numerous snow storms, Jeff has helped in finding on campus staff to keep the labs open longer - even if he had to work on it from home, while not on duty. This dedication to users is greatly appreciated by all. Jeff also spent a lot of time on hiring. His efforts in the paper work committee helped us stay on top of the many minor details. In between hiring and disruptive users, Jeff spends a great deal of time interacting with consultants and the rest of the staff. His personality and humor helps keep the lab environment calm and friendly, even during high-stress periods. Jeff's technical ability ranks up high with his wonderful customer service skills. His first semester as a supervisor was spent learning the intricacies of the DML. His hard work has helped many with video capturing and other DML hardware. This semester he has moved on to helping out with many other tasks - his quick learning abilities helps the team keep the lab running smoothly. All in all, his hard work, dedication and friendly personality makes Jeff our Supervisor of the Semester. {tm}

When Eric Ceres and Jeff Fein-Worton encounter a task that can be streamlined, they put their minds to it. At Busch, the inventory and maintenance databases were two separate systems, but they knew it could easily be integrated into one. Since a lot of information used for ticketing down machines was located in the inventory database, it took extra time to look up that info. They decided to do something about it. And then the Maintenance Database was born. Eric and Jeff worked jointly on the Maintenance Database with the intention of sharing it with all campuses. They knew that each campus used their own form of a repair/maintenance/inventory database and perhaps one uniform database could be used by all. Since computers sometimes get moved from one campus to another during the upgrades, a universal database made sense. They spent a lot of their own time planning the project before presenting the idea to their managers. Once the project was given a green-light, they wasted no time in creating the program. In a month they produced a usable Maintenance Database. From the start, they designed it to be flexible enough for everyone to use, requesting and integrating suggestions from other supervisors. They added extra features such as an Excel sheet export and a computer tag/label creator to help save everyone's time. What started out as a simple, "let's just make this into one database" idea, became a very useful program for CCF. {wll}

All of the consultants on Busch know Jeff, since most have been helped by him during their shifts. While taking care of everything in the DML, Jeff also made time to redesign a new Busch staff page in the Fall and maintain it throughout the Spring. He also worked on the cross-campus coding committee and is in charge of updating the CCF Coverage Page. During all of this, he found the time to work with Eric on the Maintenance Database. In an effort to improve the efficiency of all of the supervisors, he spent a lot of time and late nights working at ARC with Eric trying to make sure it was everything they thought it should be. Jeff has also helped CCF Support with the creation of the new CCF webpages, helping to create a template in order to have uniform-looking, easy to update webpages. Jeff's hard work and helpful nature are only two of the reasons that we think he is worthy of this award. Congratulations Jeff! {mnb, wll}

In a nutshell, Jeff has always done an amazing job for CCF.

Jeff's versatility and dedication to CCF is evident in the wide array of cross campus projects in which he has been involved. His continued support of the maintenance and toner databases helped us to manage the machines and printer supplies in our labs. He also supported the coverage page, which is not only used by CCF, but also by the Help Desk and ResNet.

Jeff was approached by the Hiring Committee when they decided to put together a survey assessing the hiring efforts of the past spring. This survey was distributed to all the supervisors and managers from CCF, the Help Desk, ResNet, and Operations who were involved in the annual hiring efforts. His experience with the hiring process and intelligent insights into lab operations played an important role in completing the project.

He gladly offered to put his technical knowledge and creativity to use again as he worked with other CCF supervisors on revising an Information Protection and Security (IPS) handbook, a document that is circulated widely throughout the university.

Always quick to respond to any requests for help, Jeff is reliable, more than capable, and brings much enthusiasm to the workplace. If Jeff thinks that something can be changed for the better, he makes constructive comments and will follow through with action. In all of his work, Jeff effectively blends technical expertise with excellent management and communication skills.

Jeff previously received this award, and it is no wonder that he is receiving it once again. He consistently delivers results, maintains a cooperative spirit, and seeks to improve operations. He has since moved on to pursue a full-time career and will be greatly missed. Congratulations, Jeff, and best of luck! {mm, mnb, wll}

Busch went through a lot of changes this semester. We had supervisors move on to their professional careers and others that worked less hours in order to focus on their classes. Throughout it all Tom was there to help us. He changed his schedule so that we would have more coverage late at night, he covered for supervisors when they needed the day off for studying, and he picked up the slack when people left and we needed someone to pick up one of the lab responsibilities. All semester long, there wasn't much that Tom didn't do. He was the Jack of All Trades from checking cleaning, keeping up with repairs in the lab to making sure that we had supplies. Tom always did what was assigned to him. He took on new projects with enthusiasm. Tom also made sure he spent time with the consultants so that they would know that he was available and around when he was on duty since the office is now further away from the consultant station. In his tenure as an ALS, he has matured and really grown into the position. Tom was seen as a teacher to the SITs this semester, helping to guide them through their duties. He always has a smile on his face and is always willing to help someone out or do something that needs to be done. His attitude and enthusiasm make working with him a pleasure. Tom is a great person to have on staff. He is funny and he gets along with everyone. Tom always has an entertaining story for you. He tries hard to make the Busch labs a fun place to work. He is an all around awesome supervisor, and because of this, we are proud to make Tom Busch's Supervisor of the Semester. Congratulations Tom! {mnb, wll}

Brian's strong technical ability and diligence at repairing machines makes him a tremendous asset to the labs. For most of his time with us Brian has often made his coworkers happy by covering many, many shifts. Brian is particularly patient with lab patrons, and he is excellent at deciphering what those who are unfamiliar with computers really mean when they are asking for help. {ss}

Over his several years working in the Cook/Douglass labs, Brian has been a role model for consultants. Consistently, he has treated all lab patrons with respect, and has demonstrated patience and professionalism with even the most demanding users. In addition to his manner with those who use the lab, he is a great person to work with. Brian not only helps those he works with by offering assistance while on duty, he often covers shift for his coworkers. In addition to his commitment to his duties, Brian has taken the initiative to be trained on basic repair and is a senior member of the repair team. {ss}

Corey is a great guy. From the moment he started in the lab, he has worked to become the best consultant he can be. Whenever Corey is working the atmosphere is always positive and pleasant. He takes the time to know your name, and puts you immediately at ease by his outgoingness. Corey is always extremely enthusiastic, motivated, and well informed. He is never sitting at his computer, but is up running around the lab helping patrons. The work he does at the labs is nothing short of well-done, and he is not afraid to ask his fellow co-workers or supervisors for help when necessary. Corey is a very well-rounded individual, and a pleasure to work within the labs. {lm,kp,ag,mb}

Sam started working for the Help Desk in the summer 2001. He is one of our senior consultants, who have supervisor type responsibilities. Sam is never satisfied just "doing the job." He is a Macintosh enthusiast and has started creating a Macintosh tutorial for the Help Desk on his own. He also suggested that we get Macintosh OS X 10.1 for the Help Desk to better support our Macintosh users. Sam will be responsible for this upgrade. Sam decided to install Windows XP at home because we started to get XP questions at the Help Desk. Even though we do not have formal e-mails from users about Sam's performance, we often get "thank yous" from users over the phone that Sam has helped. If Sam is given a task, large or small, we know that he will do the job well. Sam is professional and mature beyond his years. {kb}

Although Neil only started working here this semester, he has really taken on the role of lab consultant. In his short time in the labs, he has already proven that he wants to learn everything he can from the job and takes every opportunity to expand his knowledge and help out the labs. Neil is always helping patrons, on top of what's going on in the lab, and goes above and beyond to find solutions to any issues such as with RUWireless, duplex printing, and the projectors. Additionally, he is extremely knowledgeable and a real asset when patrons have difficult questions. Neil also helped with SWAT during both days of Move-In weekend and impressed everyone with whom he worked with his professionalism and knowledge. His positive attitude, ability to adapt to every situation, and ability to work through a problem until he finds a solution are just a few of the reasons that Neil has been chosen as a Busch Consultant of the Month. Congratulations Neil!

Davin Fong has been working at CAC since the Fall 2000 semester. In that time, we have all come to depend on Davin to bail out the lab in our times of need. It is no exaggeration to say that he may have taken the most coverages among all CCF consultants during his time working for the labs. Davin is always looking for new ways to help the lab run even better, passing on suggestions to the lab in an effort to help solve possible problems. He always has a pleasant attitude whether working with his fellow consultants or helping users. {mk}

The management staff at Cook/Douglass is extremely pleased to name Matt Forrestal our Supervisor of the Semester for the Spring of 2005. Matt has come a long way since being promoted to Asst. Lab Supervisor in the fall semester of 2004. He has proven time and again that our decision to promote him was a good one. Matt served as our hiring Supervisor this spring and did a fantastic job. He works very hard on any task he's given and he has never disappointed. He takes every task to heart, whether it's working out a difficult issue with a consultant - or giving a consultant merits. Whether its watering the plants and agonizing over whether he can keep them healthy - or inspecting the satellite sites for imperfections. It doesn't matter what the task is, he always gives his utmost attention. He's not bashful about taking charge of any given situation. Matt's leadership abilities are apparent and although he doesn't flaunt his authority, he doesn't shy away from it either. He has gone from a fine consultant to a fine SIT to a fine Asst. Lab Supervisor. The sky is the limit. Congratulations Matt. This award is well deserved. {pd}

The Management staff at Cook/Douglass is once again happy to name Matt Forrestal our Supervisor on the Semester for the fall of 2005. When deciding who to name as the new Lab Supervisor in the Spring of 2005, the decision was fairly simple. Matt has constantly demonstrated his abilities to get things done and get them done well under the deadline. In addition to his duties, he was charged this year with updating the Standard Operator Procedure Guide in the summer time and spent many hours bringing it all up to date. Although it is always a work-in-progress, it was a job well done. Matt took over as cleaning supervisor this semester and took to the task with his usual thoroughness. Matt's unique sense of humor, coupled with his attention to detail make him a valuable asset to our staff. His rapport with his fellow supervisors and the consultants who report to him is excellent. The Assistants and Supervisors-In-Training look up to Matt. He has been a source of information and guidance for everyone that reports to him. So please congratulate Matt Forrestal, a repeat winner of the Supervisor of The Semester at Cook/Douglass. {pd}

Vanessa performs all consultant responsibilities expected of her, and goes above and beyond those expectations on a regular basis. Her extensive knowledge of lab software, as well as html, benefits both lab users and her peers. Vanessa is always willing to help and maintains the highest standards of excellence in all facets of her job. Her consistent excellence has won her the appreciation of all the CAC supervisors, and nomination for March consultant of the month. {el, jg}

After initially being hired by the Cook/Douglass labs, Jodie expressed interest in working at the Help Desk in December last year. Jodie came to us very highly recommended - she received glowing recommendation from her supervisors at C/D Labs. Jodie was awarded permanent shifts at the Help Desk for the Fall 08 semester, where her kind, courteous nature quickly adapted from helping lab patrons to supporting the Rutgers community over the phones with a variety of technical problems. She has kept up that level of excellent customer service throughout the semester, and her warm friendly presence makes Help Desk a nicer place to work. Jodie is majoring in Psychology, with minors in Cognitive Science and Music, with plans to graduate in 2010. {la}

By his second day at the Help Desk, Sam Friedman was already providing help and encouragement to his colleagues. Sam always go out of his way to help callers and his peers. Sam joined the Help Desk staff with a strong knowledge base and even so was eager to ask questions to learn more. He is an excellent consultant and everyone enjoys working with him. Sam is from Moorestown, in southern New Jersey, and has two brothers and a sister. A member of the Rutgers College class of 2007, Sam is undecided about his major but "I'm into technology/communication, and how they can both be used to build great things. I love fast cars and will one day own one. I'm so busy I feel like I live in a tornado at times, and I wouldn't have it any other way!" Well done, Sam! {sf,ja}

Harel has only been working in the computer lab for 2 months. In that time he has distinguished himself in his hard work and extreme dedication to the lab. He is always up and going around the lab and makes his presence known to all the patrons. Harel displays a great positive attitude towards fellow consultants and is very amiable with the customers. During his shifts, Harel never hesitates to approach management to ask questions about lab procedures and is usually one of the first consultants to jump on any problem that arises in the lab. We are very proud to award Harel the consultant of the month award for displaying such great leadership and enthusiasm. GREAT JOB HAREL! {jg,cb}

In the past semester at the Livingston Computing Center, Harel has distinguished himself with his hard work and extreme dedication to the lab. Harel has always been on top of his duties and is one of our most dependable consultants. His customer service skills are top notch and he is frequently out of his seat serving patrons. He not only answers their questions, but teaches them the solutions he presents. Harel's service to the lab goes far beyond helping patrons though. He works closely with management for improvement of lab operations and is the first to diagnose and bring operational issues to management's attention. For all of his hard work and dedication, Harel has been chosen as the Livingston Computing Center Consultant of the Semester. Congratulations Harel and keep up the great work! {amj}

Jia is consistently thorough when reporting problems - this keeps the management team well informed and helps us better attend to the problem. In addition, her contribution to the enforcement of lab policies is quite outstanding and sets a fine example for all consultants. Lastly, her constructive suggestions for improvement of lab operations are practical and helpful - not only to the management staff, but also to her fellow workers and lab patrons. {ag}

We are proud to present Jia-Huey Fu with the Busch Campus Supervisor Achievement Award. As an Assistant Lab Supervisor, Jia has consistently dedicated great efforts to the labs. She has done an excellent job handling scheduling and training a new Assistant Lab Supervisor, along with supervising staff and attending to her projects. She has demonstrated the amazing ability of always keeping on top of things and always being caught up in email. We are also quite impressed to see how well she follows through on her tasks and keeps everyone informed of status and updates. Her diligence, enthusiasm and positive attitude has greatly contributed to making us an effective management team. Thank you, Jia! :) {Cb, Ik, Av}

Willow is a quick learner, always courteous, and makes the user feel at ease as soon as they approach her. She is dependable, always showing up on time for her opening shifts. Willow is a model consultant for her co-workers, with a friendly, helpful and outgoing attitude. She has helped the supervisors many a times with numerous projects, and for that we are greatful. Willow is a truly deserved recipient of this award. {kt, wl}

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Last Updated: September 27, 2007