Comet Commendations are an opportunity to recognize fellow College of Engineering employees who take actions that strengthen our community. Staff, faculty and other academic employees are encouraged to participate and recognize their colleagues.
Each month, three recipients and one submitter from the previous month will be randomly selected to receive a $25 gift card.
Randomly selected recipients will be highlighted in Engineering Weekly on the first Tuesday of the month. All other recipients of commendations will be recognized on the college's intranet on an ongoing basis.
Note: This program is for staff, faculty and other academic employees. See below for resources and ideas to recognize student staff, graduate and professional students and postdocs.
- Student Employee Appreciation
- Graduate/Professional Student Appreciation Week
- Postdoc Appreciation Week
Commendations Given
February 2023
Recipient |
Recipient's Department |
Reason for Commendation |
Submitter |
Submitter's Department |
Corwin Green |
BAE |
Corwin has been working diligently to create reference materials that document policies and procedures that immediately benefit students, faculty, and staff in the department. Additionally, he is thoughtful and intentional to train others on the various systems in which he has experience. His problem-solving skills and valuable insights are very much appreciated! |
Jordan Dade |
BFTV Cluster |
Erik Peters |
COE IT |
Thank you for going above and beyond in your customer service today. I really appreciate your attention to detail and providing what's needed for us to perform at the highest level. |
Alison Metzger-Jones | Dean's Office/Development |
Norma Andrade |
Shared Services |
Norma always provides amazing customer service and support to College of Engineering stakeholders. Norma has an incredible service spirit and is incredibly dedicated. The Neuroengineering and Medicine Center is hosting a symposium that will feature student presentations and demonstrations. The student teams had a variety of supplies that were needed for their projects, and Norma was instrumental in finalizing the orders so that they would be processed quickly. This kind of extra effort is typical for Norma, but certainly not typical in the world! I am so appreciative of her as a colleague and leader of the procurement team in the college! |
Melanie Clague |
Dean's Office
|
Tara Jones & Janiya Berry |
AUSS-C |
Tara and Janiya are great team members of the ECE department. Whenever situations arise within payroll, they are always willing to listen and help to come up with solutions so that it turns into a win-win resolution. Thank you both for your constant teamwork! |
Carole Bustamante
|
ECE |
Yesenia Cervantes-Tucker |
LEADR/AvenueE |
Yesenia knocked out three thank you's to donors very promptly for us this week. Also, she's gone above and beyond to share the impact of the Takahashi's gift so that Gina McAdam can steward the family. Thank you for prioritizing stewardship. Your effort makes a difference with our donors! |
Alison Metzger-Jones
|
Dean's Office/Development |
January 2023
Recipient |
Recipient's Department |
Reason for Commendation |
Submitter |
Submitter's Department |
Molly Bechtel |
Dean's Office |
Molly Bechtel has been doing an amazing job as the Interim Director of Communications and Culture. In addition to taking on additional responsibilities for her interim role, and filling in gaps during staff turnover, Molly has stayed invested and active in various college committees. Two of these committees I have the pleasure of working with Molly on (the college's Committee for Staff Development and Retention and the DEI Committee) and been able to see her significant contributions firsthand. Molly is amazing at leveraging these spaces to constantly work towards creating a positive and inclusive environment for COE staff. I'm continually impressed with Molly's can-do attitude, incredible follow-through, and invaluable knowledge. Thank you, Molly! |
Lauren Worrell |
CEE |
Cheryl Herr |
BME |
Cheryl has modeled the way for excellent use of college templates with campus branding to promote BME's seminar series. She asks great questions and I'm grateful for her partnership! |
Molly Bechtel | Dean's Office |
David Lee |
CS |
I want to acknowledge the hard work and countless hours of OT David Lee has put in since his arrival in CS in mid-October. David was hired as one of our research admin staff and has been our only research admin staff for the past two months. David has jumped in to the role headfirst, is learning tons, cleaning up messes, and has been the only one assisting CS faculty with their proposals, reports and account management since the end of October. He's exceeding expectations for sure. Thank you, David, for all your hard work. |
Meshell Louderman |
CS
|
Erik Peters |
IT |
Erik noticed my makeshift computer setup and took the initiative and time to make it better with an overdue equipment upgrade. Thank you, Erik! |
Molly Bechtel | Dean's Office |
Elsa Rojas Perez |
Dean's Office |
We received a last-minute request to organize a visit and Elsa perfectly executed the logistics. Elsa made this easy for everyone involved and quickly created a schedule. Thanks, Elsa! |
Ammy Martinez |
Dean's Office
|
Brigitta Schumacher-Bradley |
Dean's Office |
Brigitta helped us make new reservations for seminar rooms when Kemper 1003 became unavailable due to construction work. She is always helpful and contributes ideas for solving challenges and/or finding resources. I wanted to send a shoutout as it's great to have someone like Brigitta as a colleague. |
Gabriela Lee |
Center for Neuroengineering & Medicine |
December 2022
Recipient |
Recipient's Department |
Reason for Commendation |
Submitter |
Submitter's Department |
Sabrina Oliver |
Dean's Office | Sabrina's knowledge, competency, patience, diplomacy and experience were invaluable for helping the new Associate Dean for Academic Personnel & Planning onboard quickly this Fall and not make too many errors! In fact, all errors made occurred because the new Associate Dean neglected to get Sabrina's excellent advice. | Jeannie Darby |
Dean's Office |
Reuben Castelino |
CEE/IT | While working remotely, my laptop decided to not allow me to log in, with an unusual error. First, I want to give a shout out to Dean Bunn and Nathan Benedicto for also helping me, but in the end Reuben was able to walk me through the problem solving process and get me logged in and back to work. Reuben is always so patient and helps guide me through a technical solution in a way that I can follow along (being a very non-technical person). Thank you Reuben for your excellent customer service and timely support - you are such a pleasure to work with! | Lauren Worrell | CEE |
Siwei Li |
Center for Nano Micro Manufacturing | Siwei has really stepped up to continue making progress on the repair of our Nanoquest IBE/RIBE/CAIBE system while Vishal is out on family leave. He has shown great dedication to serving the CNM2 users and he has done an amazing job at keeping CNM2 instrumentation in optimal condition. Thank you Siwei! | Ryan Anderson | Center for Nano Micro Manufacturing |
November 2022
Recipient |
Recipient's Department |
Reason for Commendation |
Submitter |
Submitter's Department |
Craig Patterson |
BME | Craig Patterson is recognized for his outstanding work in dealing with highly complex grants and contracts, including a DARPA contract and an NST training grant. Craig is extremely knowledgeable, very helpful in working with others to solve issues, and all-around wonderful to work with. | Gabriela Lee |
Dean's Office, Center for Neuroengineering & Medicine |
Christal Wintersmith |
BME | Christal has consistently provided excellent connections to the BME Graduate Group students and the BME department more generally to convey announcements about seminars and other events of interest to this community. Christal has also recently stepped up and joined the committee interviewing candidates for the Program Coordinator position on the NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) NeuralStorm training grant. | Gabriela Lee | Dean's Office, Center for Neuroengineering & Medicine |
Jessica Rodriguez |
MAE | Jessica has been doing a great job as co-chair of the COE financial staff networking group. She is easy to work with and guides the group conversation well. | Stephanie Farver | CEE |
Ryan Gorsiski |
CHE & MSE | Ryan has recently been going above and beyond as not only the chair of the COE advising staff networking group, but taking on the professional development committee of the campus-wide GSAC group and being an amazing advocate for graduate program coordinators in our college and across campus. He is incredibly supportive of all the GPCs in our college, offering advice on processes and sharing best practices. Ryan has a willingness to help out and a positive attitude. | Lauren Worrell | CEE |
Nathan Benedicto |
IT | This Comet Commendation is for one of our newest team members in IT, Nathan Benedicto. The Development and External Relations Team had been having challenges with the 2nd floor ASB printer. My first introduction to Nathan was when he offered to print a couple of documents for me, so I could go to a donor meeting. Additionally, he quickly got to work researching options to fix our printer connection and/or get a new printer. Just days later, we had a new printer and step-by-step instructions on how to connect to it. Nathan provided timely updates, quick action and a great solution. He set the bar for customer service super high. Thank you, Nathan! Super glad you're on Team COE. | Leigh Ann Hartman | Dean's Office, Development & External Relations |
October 2022
Recipient |
Recipient's Department |
Reason for Commendation |
Submitter |
Submitter's Department |
Alin Wakefield |
Dean's Office | Alin went above and beyond in coordinating an event to foster collaboration between UC Davis and Sandia National Lab. He single-handedly covered everything to ensure it was a productive and useful meeting for the entire team and he handled last minute requests with grace and competence. | Raissa D'Souza | Dean's Office, MAE and CS |
Ammy Martinez |
Dean's Office | Ammy consistently goes above and beyond in her duties. As a member of multiple recent Recruitment Advisory Committees, I personally observed Ammy going the extra mile when managing the logistics of many busy calendars, food delivery, and all the small things to support the committee and present the best impression possible to our candidates. Our successful recruitments were due in large part to Ammy's attention to detail and positive attitude when faced with difficult challenges. | Steve Pigg | Dean's Office |
Brian Donnelly |
IT | Brian started the Fall Quarter short two members of his DevOps team. He quickly reassigned some of their job duties to himself to ensure a successful start of the term. From spending countless hours contacting software vendors about licenses to assisting with server patching sessions, Brian displayed outstanding leadership and a thorough understanding of the mission at hand. | Dean Bunn | IT |
CeCe Coyle |
MAE | CeCe is extremely resourceful, hard-working, and so adaptable to change. She is currently serving on the Aggie Enterprise Oracle Testing Committee and will be a tremendous resource for the even bigger changes ahead. | Lili Scheiber | MAE |
Eileen Panguito |
BME | Eileen has enthusiastically stepped in to assist Professor Marcu with her P41 center award administrative duties. Eileen has inherited a tremendous amount of work and does it all with a smile. Thank you, Eileen, for all you do and for working late to get it all done! | Lisa Hayes | BME |
Elsa Rojas Perez |
Dean's Office | In multiple professional interactions, Elsa went above and beyond in contributing to events of the Center for Neuroengineering & Medicine, such as the research symposium at the beginning of this summer. She had great suggestions and contributed to problem-solving when issues arose. It is a pleasure working with Elsa, and I want to send a shout-out in recognition of her contributions. | Gabriela Lee | Center for Neuroengineering & Medicine, Dean's Office |
Fatima Garcia |
CEE | Fatima recently put a lot of effort into helping with orientation for our new graduate students. She prepared slides and presented information for the financial team at orientation and is hosting an additional training for our graduate students on purchasing and reimbursements. I really appreciate the development of these additional resources to proactively guide and train our graduate students on the complex policies, processes and systems. | Lauren Worrell | CEE |
Inna Revzin |
BME | Inna has been very supportive of our department while we struggled to hire an academic personal analyst. She was very thorough in answering our many questions, provided guidance with the various programs, and was very pleasant to work with. | Carole Bustamante | ECE |
Jessica Rodriguez |
MAE | Jessica presented to the Finance Staff Networking Group and showed us how to automate the projections spreadsheets we provide to our PIs. I really appreciate the help. It will reduce the time it takes to generate the reports. Thank you, Jessica! | Craig Patterson | BME |
Jessica Stoller |
CS | When ECE lost their graduate program coordinator, Jessica agreed to work with both the CAO and financial analyst who had taken of the tasks of the graduate program coordinator. Jessica gave us advice on forms and procedures and agreed to meet with our students while still performing her own duties within her department. We cannot thank Jessica enough for everything she has done for our department. | Carole Bustamante | ECE |
Joseph Menke |
IT | Joseph has gladly stepped up and taken on additional IT admin services provided to the college. | Dean Bunn | IT |
Lauren Worrell |
CEE | Our team was contacted by the wife of an alumnus. The alum had recently passed away and was working on his obituary. She asked us about his degrees and some awards he had received. She mentioned his name on display in an engineering building. Lauren tracked down the awards, took photos, and sent them to the widow. What an awesome example of going above and beyond. The widow was incredibly grateful. Lauren, thank you! | Alison Metzger-Jones | Dean's Office |
Lili Scheiber |
MAE | Lili provided excellent support in setting up accounting systems for the UC Davis EcoCAR EV Challenge team. This new team has a complex mix of funding elements, and Lili has done a great job in getting these set up. Her efforts have benefitted our 6 fellowship students as well as the faculty and staff involved in the team. Thank you, Lili! | Mike Hill | MAE |
Maureen Ramirez |
CHE/MSE | Maureen started as our new financial manager for Chem Eng and Mat Sci at a time when all three financial manager positions were open. Almost every lab, including mine, had months of backlogged issues to deal with. Morale was low. Maureen came in and started working 60+ hours per week. She is very knowledgeable, took careful notes, asked the right questions and she systematically corrected 6 months of financial mistakes over a period of less than a month for more than 40 professors. She did the work of three people and never complained or made excuses. I was a truly awesome display of hard work and competence. She deserves a commendation, a raise and a parade. | Adam Moule | CHE |
Ruben Arevalo |
BME | Ruben has once again gone above and beyond with our IT support! We had two conferences in one day and they both needed IT support, so he went back and forth across campus to assist both events, and it was last-minute notice. Ruben also came in clutch with getting the faculty started for fall quarter IT needs. Thank you for all you do, Ruben! | Lisa Hayes | BME |
Shadaya Litt |
EUO | I would like to recognize and thank Shadaya for all of her hard work and continued dedication to the students and the work done by the EUO. We have been severely understaffed for the past few months. She continues to show up with a positive attitude despite the volume of work. I appreciate her contributions to the team and want to make sure she is acknowledged and recognized for it! | Lisa Laughter | EUO |