Karri Burgess is the Employee of the Month for August 2021. Karri is the first person students, faculty, and staff interact with when they walk into the front office. She greets people with a warm smile and welcoming attitude – thank you for making sure everyone feels welcomed as soon as they come in!
With the changes to social distancing and room requirements from last year to this year, Karri was the first to step up and offer help in reorganizing department spaces so they were ready for the fall semester. An example of this was the CIC – E106 was used for lab instructor offices last year, and now that the CIC is fully open in-person this year, the tables and chairs needed to be rearranged. Karri worked with Nicole to make sure E107 and E106 had the best arrangement of chairs and tables that allowed maximum number of students in each room, while also taking into consideration pathways for students in wheelchairs to move around. This required multiple trial and error attempts before finding the best solution. Karri also helped to set up and organize the new reception area in the CIC to make it more welcoming. The work Karri did with Nicole ensured that the CIC was ready to go for students by the start of the semester.
Karri was essential in the recent department website upgrade. This was a 9-month project that launched in August. Karri reached out to every person in the department to make sure that there were pictures, contact information, and other important content was available and up-to-date. Karri created and implemented a new permission number request and CIC feedback form for the department website to improve student experience. When it came down to crunch time, Karri took on a large chunk of the work in order to make sure we hit our target launch date. This included going through many of the pages and pictures for legal use and ADA compliance, designing templates to convey information to our key audiences, fixing links, and merging information from the old site. This project would not have gotten done on time without Karri’s dedication and hard work!
Anytime anyone walks into the department office they are met with a friendly smile and hello from Karri. Karri’s positive and inviting attitude not only makes the office a great place to work but makes students feel comfortable when coming in to seek help. She exhibits an atmosphere of caring about student needs and issues. Her desire to serve is exemplary and she responds quickly to help requests from students and coworkers.
I want to thank Karri for her many contributions to the administrative functions of the department and culture goal of the department mission!