One Small Step, One Giant Leap, Spirit of Georgia Tech: College of Sciences Staff and Faculty Receive Three Annual Awards from Georgia Tech Human Resources

Both the new One Giant Leap and One Small Step Awards (formerly known as Process Improvement Awards) are designed to honor individuals and/or teams who exhibit the following traits:

• Consistently invents or improves tools, processes, or systems.
• Regularly evaluates situations, gathers data, and uses the data to identify opportunities for change.
• Constantly asks, “how can we do this better?” and “why do we do it that way?”
• Frequently considers non-traditional approaches.
• Regularly identifies problems but focuses on potential solutions.
• Proactively seeks feedback and involvement from constituents.

The winners of these awards, presented by Georgia Tech Human Resources, easily meet those criteria. 

In addition, the Spirit of Georgia Tech Award aims to honor employees who “inspire others with their presence and professionalism, creating an environment where others flourish and thrive.” That, say those who work with her, exactly describes School of Biological Sciences Academic Program Coordinator II Chung Kim, this year’s award winner.

One Giant Leap to fight the pandemic 

For the One Giant Leap Award — which identifies those who exhibit those behaviors on an Institute level — the winning team includes College of Sciences' Greg Gibson, Patton Distinguished Professor in the School of Biological Sciences, Director of the Center for Integrative Genomics, and member of the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience; and Joshua Weitz, Patton Distinguished Professor and Co-Director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Quantitative Biosciences.

Both Gibson and Weitz have been heavily involved in the Institute’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Gibson helped to set up the process for testing Georgia Tech students, faculty, and staff, and Weitz and an interdisciplinary team created the Covid-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool, an interactive map estimating Covid-19 risk levels for gatherings of different group sizes for every county in the United States and in the UK. Both Weitz and Gibson are on an Institute task force helping to create a safe return to campus in the fall.

The Testing Site Operations team, which shares the 2020 award, includes: Dale Allgood, Alfred Blue, Tokiki Brown, Anton Bryksin, Jenny Cotton, Greg Gibson, Sheree Gibson, Benjamin Holton, Jamison Keller, Brian Liu, True Merrill, Alex Ortiz, Miles Paca, Mike Shannon, Nicholas Speller, Sara Warner, Joshua Weitz, and JulieAnne Williamson.

The Spirit of Georgia Tech = Chung Kim’s support for faculty 

Lisa Redding, academic program coordinator II for Bioinformatics and Quantitative Biosciences, School of Biological Sciences, says that in dozens of supporting comments from graduate students and faculty, “Chung was praised for her kindness, professionalism, and positive attitude. She is known for being knowledgeable, helpful, organized, and for following-up to make sure that problems are resolved.”

Redding says students echo those comments; Chung “cares about them as people, not just as students. She is said to exude positivity,” and goes out of her way to make students feel well-supported in their graduate education. They also praise her for taking time to greet them by name when they pass on campus. 

One Small Step for secure GT devices

For the One Small Step Award — for a team or individual who exhibits those behaviors on an individual or departmental level — the award goes to a team of College of Sciences Academic and Research Computing Services (ARCS) professionals who came up with a new way for enrolling and managing devices on campus networks. 

The following ARCS staffers, along with an Office of Information Technology (OIT) staff member, were honored for their work on the College of Sciences Asset and Endpoint Management Dashboard:

Steven Daniele, Academic & Research IT Senior Support Engineer, ARCS

Justin Filoseta, Director of IT, Research Scientist II, ARCS

Troy W. Hilley, Systems/IT Architect Principal, 

Jeffrey S. Lowe, Senior Web Developer, ARCS

Nguyen T. Nguyen, Support Engineer Lead, ARCS 

Arian Padron, Lead Support Engineer, ARCS

Michael Sheldon, Application Developer Manager, ARCS

Troy T. West, Information Security Engineer Lead, OIT

“The whole process of verifying inventory, enrolling devices with endpoint management, and signing the loan form, is now a simple and self-service workflow, available via the one-stop-shop of the College of Sciences Asset and Endpoint Management Dashboard,” says Lew Lefton, College of Sciences Assistant Dean for Information Technology and Associate Vice President for Research Computing. “This convenience increased the number of people who were in compliance with policy, and consequently reduced the likelihood of data disclosures and their associated risks.”