Fall 2021 Office of Global Engagement Unit Awards Announced

During our fall 2021 virtual retreat, we honored our employees for their exceptional service throughout 2021. Congratulations!

Ginger Davis Outstanding Service Award 

The Ginger Davis Outstanding Service Award recognizes an employee who demonstrates outstanding service to Global Engagement by going above and beyond their scope of work.

Nan Clarke, Intensive English Program

By the end of the fall semester, the IEP staff had been reduced by almost 90% to two full-time employees. Nan Clarke, as one of the remaining two, took on MULTIPLE new responsibilities without complaint. Starting in the summer of 2020, Nan went from being hired as the lead inIn late spring of 2020, due to the ramifications of geopolitical tensions and the COVID global pandemic, the IEP received word of impending staff cuts.

By the end of the fall semester, the IEP staff had been reduced by almost 90% to two full-time employees. Nan Clarke, as one of the remaining two, took on MULTIPLE new responsibilities without complaint. I cannot begin to enumerate the tasks that Nan has taken on over the past year, but will offer a few details as examples of her dedication to the IEP, the Office of Global Engagement and the university over the last year and one-half. Starting in the summer of 2020, Nan went from being hired as the lead instructor ONE of the IEP’s semester-long core courses – Writing/Grammar, to performing all lead duties for three proficiency levels EACH of Writing/Grammar, Reading/Vocabulary, as well as being asked to combine curricula for a newly created Conversation, Presentation and Listening Skills class for three proficiency levels.

Some might think that because the IEP’s numbers were lower, there was less work to do. Student numbers have nothing to do with proper and professional course planning or instruction. The work did not decrease, in fact, in Nan’s case, not only were her course planning responsibilities increased 3-fold, but she was required for several semesters to teach classes equivalent to a FULL-TIME TEACHING LOAD. It was too much to ask and yet Nan persevered. Additionally, Nan helped to lead two of four WEEKLY student recruitment workshops as follow up to a virtual Latin American educational fair the IEP participated in with GTI and Sponsored Students coordinator, Steve Bergman. These hour-long, new student recruitment workshops were (and continue to be) held twice daily on Mondays and Fridays. This is time Nan dedicated to the program outside her increased lead and teaching duties – all with the hope that a few students might join the next semester’s program or learn more about NC State University.

The ability for the IEP to continue functioning as a reputable academic program on NC State’s campus is attributable to Nan’s tireless efforts over the last year to maintain and improve the IEP’s academic standards of excellence. I know from working closely alongside her that Nan often worked in excess of 60-80 hour workweeks. While we have all worked tirelessly over the last year and a half, Nan’s professionalism – unseen by most in this unit – deserves acknowledgment from the Office of Global Engagement.

Rookie of the Year Award

Rookie of the Year recognizes an employee who has excelled in the first 24 months of their position.

Carolin Lehmann, Office of Global Engagement

Carolin has put on a one woman show helping revamp NC State Global’s branding and increasing our visibility with our stakeholder audiences. She has taken an active role in the overhaul of our social media, spearheading efforts such as leading the Global Spotlight series, revamping our Instagram presence, and working with offices, units, and individuals to up our marketing efforts. Carolin is also always willing to assist various members of the team on projects, large and small, that she thinks can provide value to the wider NC State Global mission.

Recently, she has been working with Steve Bergman (Sponsored Students) and the Hayley Hardenbrook from the Graduate School to help spearhead the creation of the first global admissions landing pages where potential students–undergraduate, graduate, and IEP–can come to learn more about our campus community and program offerings before being routed to the various offices in charge of admissions. In short, Carolin is worthy of consideration for multiple NC State Global awards and is fully deserving given the efforts she has put into making our division better.

The Think and Do Award

The Think and Do Award recognizes an employee who exhibits resourcefulness, an innovative spirit and implements new processes to significantly impact the productivity and efficiency of Global Engagement. 

Kelsey Stolzenbach, Office of International Services

It is my honor to nominate Kelsey Stolzenbach for the Think and Do Award for her resourcefulness and innovative spirit in implementing a new, electronic procedure for OIS’s Program Extension request process in our new case management software (sunapsis)! The program extension process that Kelsey created was the office’s first “checklist” type of process in sunapsis. Checklist creation requires a high level of technical expertise as well as resourcefulness to troubleshoot bugs as the process is planned, built, and tested. In addition, an innovative spirit is necessary to imagine and create training materials that can be used to teach people of a variety of learning styles how to use the new process.

Kelsey’s resourcefulness and innovative spirit were very evident throughout the entire process of building and implementing this new process. Her resourcefulness can be seen in all the research she did (from reviewing forums and software guides to revisiting past OIS advising notes and processing manuals) and her innovative spirit can be seen in the variety of tools and training she created to teach staff how to use the process (a video, written materials, real-time trainings with actual examples, etc.). As a program extension is a very time sensitive benefit, the ability to process them efficiently with a high level of productivity is critical and Kelsey’s work to migrate this process to an electronic based one represents a significant increase in OIS productivity and efficiency for processing of these requests. Thank you Kelsey!

Pride of the Wolfpack 

The Pride of the Wolfpack recognizes individual employees for a special or unique contribution to their college or unit or the campus community. One candidate for the award was selected by the internal awards committee to then put forward as NC State Global’s nominee for the university-wide award from our division.

Eva Kavalova, NC State Prague

Eva always goes above and beyond in her position. Notably when we had to send students back to the US during the COVID crisis, Eva worked day and night to help accommodate students and help them get home. When we did not have programs for the past year, she found ways to improve our internal processes and also immerse herself in professional development webinars. When we lost staff, she stepped up and took over job responsibilities until we were able to bring the new staff member on. She is always thinking one step ahead and because of this, the programs run smoothly and the students are happy. In addition, she always has a positive attitude and is happy to do whatever is necessary even if it is routine, administrative work. When she is out sick for a day or two, we definitely notice her absence in the office!