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Employees of the month
Susan Wakefield
April Unclassified Employee of the Month
Susan Wakefield
Started at KU: 1996
Current title: Assistant to Eli Michaelis, Higuchi Biosciences Center director
What that means: Wakefield is associated with a large program on aging funded by the National Institutes of Health and with the Center for Neurobiology and Immunology Research. She organizes meetings, prepares reports and other materials for distribution and provides day-to-day support for a number of busy researchers. Wakefield provides support for workshops that center researchers offer periodically. She reserves the venues, prepares handouts, makes parking arrangements, orders lunches, makes sure that refreshments are available and greets attendees.
Quotable: Colleagues praise her efficiency, her work ethic, her passion for her work and her ability to interact and communicate effectively. One colleague says, “She has a busy schedule, but the quality of her work is always professional and superb.” Another says, “What she has done for my workshops is far beyond what I asked her to do.”
Amber Newquist
April University Support Staff Employee of the Month
Amber Newquist
Started at KU: 2008
Current title: Art and Architecture Library operations manager
What that means: Newquist is responsible for circulation activities, student employee supervision, course reserves, stack maintenance and Inter-Library Loan/Document Delivery service for the unit.
Notable: Last spring, KU Libraries conducted a study of potential alternatives to the way in which electronic course-reserve materials (e-reserves) were made available to students. The practice had been for the library staff to scan and electronically post materials such as articles, chapters, book reviews and similar items that faculty included on their course syllabi. However, with significant changes in the Libraries’ ability to assume responsibility for copyright fees and possible copyright infringements, the Libraries administration discontinued its role in managing e-reserves and transferred that responsibility to individual faculty members and graduate teaching assistants.
Newquist participated in those discussions, provided information about how the changes would affect the faculty and students with whom she works and kept the art history faculty informed. Newquist worked tirelessly with faculty and GTAs to be sure they understood their responsibilities regarding copyright law and to explain when copyright fees would be required and when they would not. She oversaw the transfer of 1,860 PDF files for some 50 art history courses to CDs and made sure that each faculty member and GTA had a disc with the materials they had formerly kept on e-reserve. She and her staff volunteered to scan additional course materials not restricted by copyright law and assisted in loading scanned course materials and the relevant data-base links onto Blackboard course sites.
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