August 2020 Advisor of the Month

Check out some of the wonderful things our advising colleagues have done this past month! Thank you to each of you for all of your hard work and dedication to the students in your areas and OSU!

Caitlin Burden, Anita Simpson, James Sutherland Although on board for just over a year, Caitlin, Anita and James have stepped up to the plate handling Math Advising duties efficiently and cordially for both majors and non-majors as well as a number of challenging projects, including Math Placement Test development and maintenance, Qualtrics Survey development & Data Analysis, Math Transfer Credit Evaluations, and Webmaster duties. During these busy CoVid times, the Math Advising staff has worked as a team to serve students, staff and faculty to the best of their abilities. Their commitment to excellence is recognized and greatly appreciated.
Laurel Clarkson On numerous occasions leading up to the fall, Laurel was asked to support some of our student-athletes with difficult and complex situations that needed timely support. Even in the midst of the pandemic, she made time in her busy schedule to ensure that the students got what they needed and calmed their nerves. Students expressed relief after getting things resolved because she stayed in constant communication under very difficult and very busy times. Thank you Laurel!
Brenda Dinan Brenda Dinan provides excellent leadership, support, and assistance to the advisors in Arts and Sciences. She works closely with the advisors in the biological sciences and the math and physical sciences in order to provide support and information for all aspects of our advising work. She worked very hard all summer to provide critical leadership for our orientation programs. She created a wonderful Carmen course for our new freshman and transfer students to complete prior to orientation. Brenda’s organization and communication skills are excellent. Her willingness to listen to her advisors and provide thoughtful and helpful advice and support is very much appreciated. Brenda’s good humor, positive energy, and sincere compassion should also be noted and celebrated. Brenda truly believes in doing what is best for the student, and she also believes in supporting advisors in their work and making sure advisors have the information and resources needed to support their students. Perhaps most importantly though, Brenda cares deeply for her advisors and provides much needed support and positive energy for her advisors. In summary, Brenda is an awesome leader, advisor, colleague, and friend!
Sam Felhaber Sam always goes the extra mile for not only our students but our office! This August and all summer long, Sam spent countless hours helping to develop carmen modules for our online Campus Change Orientation, creating videos in iMovie, re-designing the weekly emails, and updated all of our curriculum guides in a new format! This is of course on top of building our Survey classes and answering student emails and appointments. Despite August being super busy – Sam continues to bring positivity to our office each and every day. We are so thankful to have Sam as part of our HRS family!
Karen Royce Karen Royce provides excellent leadership, communication, and support for the use of Carmen in our Arts and Sciences survey classes. Each year, Karen creates the Carmen shell for the Arts and Sciences advisors to use for their freshman survey classes. She also provides very helpful Carmen training sessions for the Arts and Sciences advisors. In addition, she provides a lot of one-on-one help and training for advisors (like me) who need more help with Carmen. Karen provides the training with a very positive attitude, good humor, and an extreme amount of patience and compassion. Karen also provides leadership and excellent communication regarding the Reinstatement process for Arts and Sciences. Karen’s knowledge of OSU procedures, policies and tech skills should also be noted and celebrated. Karen cares deeply for her students and she cares deeply for her advising colleagues. She is always very willing to go above and beyond to provide help for Carmen, reinstatement questions, tech assistance, etc. Karen is a wonderful advisor, leader, colleague and friend!
Athena Yiamouyiannis Athena has great managerial skills that she applied not only for leading our team of five math-keteers but also at dealing with the challenges of autumn enrollments in math courses. Knowing the skills, strengths & expertise of each of us, she assigns us tasks that we each can complete with maximum speed and efficiency.
She worked very hard, especially in August, in order to make sure that our department will offer the best combination of in-person, online or hybrid courses based on students’ needs. Her number one priority is that we provide great service to all our students while keeping the academic standards. To that end, Athena dedicates all her time & energy cheerfully.
David Zach David has been instrumental with helping those of us teaching the combined MPS survey in making sure things run smoothly. He put together several quick reference guides and helped to make sure our transition into teaching the class on Zoom has been a seamless experience. His detailed notes and instructions have made putting together our virtual lectures and in-class activities a breeze and it has definitely helped to relieve stress on all of us!

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