Posted: 5/13/2022
Gilbert and Young Receive SNR Staff Awards in Spring 2022
Karen Gilbert and Aaron Young received the SNR Staff Awards for the 2021-2022 Academic year.
Karen is the Office Associate – Operations for the School of Natural Resources. She began working at SNR in August 2015. Some of the comments from her coworkers and supervisors are:
"Karen has taken on duties outside of her position to better serve SNR graduate students. She assumed the duties of cubicle assignment, keys and copy code assignment. She has became a general point of contact for our graduate students due to a staff vacancy. Karen has assumed duties related to SNR classroom scheduling and Course Leaf Section Scheduler (CLSS). "
"Karen does an excellent job of interacting with faculty, staff, students and guests to Hardin Hall. She responds promptly and accurately to their questions and needs. Karen also anticipates their needs and ensures they have what they need to complete their work or reason for their visit. Karen often reaches out to off-hour event organizers to ensure door access is correctly set, they sometimes don't even know this needs done.”
Aaron started as a graduate student at UNL in 2006 and began working for the Conservation and Survey Division in 2008. He began working with the groundwater levels program in 2011. Some of the comments from his coworkers and supervisors are:
"Aaron has demonstrated nothing but initiative in the past year and, prior to that, throughout the COVID-19 pandemic months of 2020! He seized upon an opportunity--one that might have easily gone unrecognized, or worse yet been postponed indefinitely--to take on a gigantic task of modernization for the benefit of all. He is continuing to make similarly great strides and, because he always follows through, he is certain to make additional signal accomplishments in 2022 and beyond. "
"Last year Aaron produced a unique and functional interactive map (CSD Ground Water and Geology Portal) that includes CSD test hole, DNR registered well, and groundwater datasets. So now you can get all these datasets at once in order to assess many different aspects of the subsurface across the entire state. I have had staff and inspectors from DEE & DHHS tell me how useful this portal is in their work. One inspector indicated this saves him a lot of time because he can easily assess the subsurface with his pad while at the inspection site. Previously he had to go back to his office, spend time on his desk top to amass all the needed information for multiple inspection sites, and then often he would need to revisit the site to get more surface/construction information that became important with this additional knowledge. "
Both Karen and Aaron received plaques and a stipend of $350 to commemorate their awards.
