2008 Peer Awards
Awards Committee: Jamee Serago (Chair), Jim Acker, Ernie Buchanan, Bob Cavey, Irina Gerasimov, Paul Lang, Tim Lincoln, Tom Northcutt, Reggie Steward
Nomination Timeframe: 15 MAR 2008 through 1 APR 2008
Date of Ceremony: 04 MAY 2008
Place: SESDA II Picnic and Peer Awards Ceremony, Bowie Bay Sox, Bowie, MD
Award Winners:
- William Teng (Team Player)
"This recipient never seems to get ruffled, and always has kind words, good suggestions, time to listen, and a calm demeanor. He understands both the systems and people, acting as a mentor to new employees, administering research programs, and above all, managing the difficult-to-manage egos and intellects of a staff composed of scientists from multiple disciplines. Much like the quarterback of a football team is the ultimate team player, and especially as a quarterback who keeps his cool and makes the correct choice while there is chaos all around him is appreciated by his teammates."
- Maura Tokay (Leadership)
"She demonstrates a particular skill at juggling a lot of projects at once – successfully. She has shown a particular panache for taking on a leadership role for new projects while at the same time maintaining the forward progress on her current suite of projects. Notably, she is now chairing the new Web Development Working Group with a focus on Web security; she has provided her technical expertise to the SESDA II Intranet portal; she recently improved the security of the peer awards nomination form; and now she maintains the SESDA II Web site with a constant eye on the important issue of security."
- Steve Graham (Team Player)
"This recipient has demonstrated the particular skill of keeping calm in the midst of chaos many times. This recipient deals with two high-profile NASA Project Scientists providing information technology support to both the scientists and to his grateful office colleagues. According to his nomination, that’s his part-time job: his full-time job is providing IT support for the regular day-to-day activities of the Earth Observing System Project Science Office. Here are a couple of noteworthy events: he successfully managed the unruly email migration to the NOMAD system, and did it both fast and with the ability to crack jokes at the same time. And at a recent meeting, when a prominent speaker was about to step to the podium, it was discovered that the audio-visual system wasn’t working. We all know that prominent speakers don’t deal well with this, so in the midst of a panicky public relations crisis, our recipient fixed the problem and let the speaker speak."
- Cindy Trapp (Wildcard)
"Cindy deals with a client base where the technical requirements are rapidly changing, and she demonstrates innovation to overcome both cumbersome manual procedures and inflexible automatic processes. You have to be a polite liaison between government operations and commercial interests, which operate in strikingly different ways. You have the responsibility to streamline and automate business processes linking the public and private sectors. And when you do all this, you improve the quality of work, improve customer service, and cut costs! Then you take on a lot of responsibility to guide and finish the process for the first-ever SESDA II Peer Awards last year. Furthermore, every now and then you have to deal with a flooded basement that forces you to move operations to a trailer where summers are like an oven and winters are like a freezer."
- Harry Smith (Unsung Hero)
"We take networks for granted – unless they’re down, and then we get upset. We take Windows for granted, unless it does something weird, and then we get upset. We take a lot of our IT facilities for granted, but someone has to support them. And oftentimes we take the people that do that support for granted, which is why the Unsung Hero Award is an important one to provide to a worthy recipient. This Unsung Hero is noted for being responsive, helpful, resourceful, and overall is a great person to work with. He was nominated by his peers to lead the Facility IT Configuration Change Board (IT-CCB). He demonstrates constantly increasing technical knowledge and takes on tasks requiring greater responsibility and organization."
- Angie Martz (Health and Safety)
"It is always important to have someone who knows about how a facility operates to keep things running smoothly and to keep things safe. Someone who is constantly aware of safety issues has an innate knowledge of situations that could become unsafe – before they do. We might not always appreciate them – just like we might not have appreciated our mother when she told us to get our roller skates off the sidewalk and to stop sticking a fork in the electrical outlet – but we know that they are acting with our best interests in mind. So we have a Health and Safety Award winner; she is the “go-to” person for numerous facility and safety questions, and this year she notably improved fire safety awareness by purchasing and distributing the Glenn Dale Fire Association handbook."
- Mike Berganski (Unsung Hero)
"Perhaps some quotes from the nominations describe our next recipient best: “He is the back-bone of our SA staff. "No" does not exist in his mentality or vocabulary.”“Over the past few years he consistently leads our group in the number of closed support tickets – and that includes the hard ones. His quick response to e-mail based requests is also phenomenal. He also takes on support tickets that others pass over such as software builds, development software integration, and also un-assigned tickets.” A foreign user had problems downloading and gaining access to our data the he needed that same day. After I had exhausted all the possibilities I knew of that would prevent this, he jumped in and solved the problem on the systems side. The user was able to regain access and was extremely happy with the efficiency of our support. He is very flexible and is not afraid to go out of "the comfort zone" to make things happen. Also, he has very good people skills which allow him to solve things in a very professional and efficient manner. If he sees a problem or one arising, he will be on it until it is fixed. 'He is our jack-of-all-trades-can-do-pit-bull-won't-say-no SA!'"
- Megan Kispert (Unsung Hero)
"Megan is very noteworthy for someone who is a fairly new member of the SESDA II family. She has been doing an outstanding job as a system administrator for the ESDIS metrics system. She has taken on new responsibilities as a database administrator, in addition to acting as a system administrator. She revamped the outdated ESDIS home page – and that apparently made the government customer very happy. According to the nominations, she is 'always helpful, no matter how busy she is'; she 'completes all her assignments with very little supervision and guidance, frequently ahead of deadline'; she is 'an excellent worker liked by her co-workers and government customers'; and 'anybody she works with soon recognizes her abilities and friendly can-do attitude and willingness to help'."
- Alex Young (Leadership)
"This recipient distinguished himself when a team member in the Solar Physics Laboratory was forced to work from home while recovering from knee surgery. He frequently made extended trips with co-workers to assist this person’s at-home work efforts and to keep him a viable member of the team. This recipient is also a gifted scientist and a true member of the community as well – he shares his knowledge and love of science in many places while traveling, speaks to children about science, and also gets interviewed for television occasionally! Above all else, this recipient 'portrays manners, professionalism, patience, and the willingness to help anyone who needs it'."
- Guang-Dih Lei (Team Player)
"Here are some phrases that have been used to describe our next recipient. 'Diligent Worker.' 'Tireless Helper.' 'What-can-I-do-to-help attitude.' 'Joy to work with.' 'An attitude that makes everyone’s day better.' But wait; there’s more! 'I have benefited many times from his instant help on a variety of subjects.' 'He will always get to the problem, investigate, and find a solution.' 'He is always eager to help his co-workers and has excellent job knowledge.' 'He is one of the most valuable people at the GES DISC.' It is truly rare to find someone who can do so many things so well – and who has an attitude that convinces you that what he’s doing is both useful and enjoyable."
- Kevin Addison (Innovator)
"According to a nomination, this recipient is a magician, because 'he brings magic to any Web site he touches.' And apparently he touches a lot of Web sites: he works on the Solar Dynamics Observatory, the STEREO project, and creates Education and Public Outreach activities for students. One particular aspect of his work is that he is addressing the fading 'coolness' factor of NASA by incorporating the newest and flashiest technologies to make the science appealing to a younger audience. In fact, for one of his projects he determined that the best solution would be to program the application in Flash, but he had never programmed in Flash before. So he proceeded to learn how. This hard work will pay dividends in NASA’s space science education and outreach efforts. His nomination says that he has shown over and over that he will do what it takes to provide top quality innovative Web sites that far exceed all expectations."
