ITS Recognizes Employee Years of Service, Announces Customer Excellence Awards

University of Kentucky Information Technology Services has recognized 40 employees who celebrated milestone years of service during the year 2020. These 40 employees, ranging from seven different ITS divisions, combined for a total of 635 years of service at UK.

ITS also recognized student, faculty, and staff recipients of their Customer Excellence in Leadership in IT Advancement Award. These award winners were recognized for their leadership in technology and their commitment to furthering IT advancement at the university.

Student recipient Lisa Parker was recognized as an exemplary student to work with during the pandemic. While completing her coursework at home, the anthropology and sociology student was grateful and gracious with her time — giving ITS valuable information about how the technology provided as a part of the LearnAnywere initiative was performing in other parts of Kentucky. ITS will continue to use her feedback as a learning opportunity to continuously improve customer service and leverage technology across campus.

Nathan Stevens, from the College of Communications and Information was the faculty recipient for 2020. As an integral part of UK esports program, Stevens serves as a mentor and teacher to students who help produce and manage esports content. He has collaborated with ITS in programming and producing various esports shows and content. Stevens additionally furthers student interests in technology through his courses covering topics in gaming and broadcasting.

ITS honored two staff recipients for the year 2020: Marianne Young from Student Success and David Boyd from UK Athletics. Throughout 2020, Young’s partnership and expertise was pivotal to the successful launch of three significant implementations — Online Major Change, Advising Hub 2.0 (beta), and the Academic Alerts System. Due to Young’s boots-on-the-ground experience, she brought ideas to the table to work out solutions for the betterment of UK’s mission to serve students. Boyd was a valued partner throughout 2020 when many athletics venues had to quickly change operations due to COVID-19. He was more than willing to help with the university’s pandemic response by allowing ITS staff to transform Athletics networks for functional hospitals, vaccine clinics, and temporary testing facilities. Boyd additionally coordinated with vendors like Ticketmaster for required downtime during maintenance windows.

Chief Information Officer Brian Nichols joins in recognizing these accomplishments.

“Furthering our vision of ‘IT Abundance’ is not possible without dedicated employees and valued partners,” he said. “ITS recognizes our employees and many collaborators throughout the university by giving our sincere gratitude.”

For a complete list of those honored for 2019 and 2020, read the ITS 18 Month Report on the ITS website.