Business faculty praises helpful WCC staff’s work

By Lilly Kujawski
Editor

In an effort to celebrate some of the hardworking staff members on campus, faculty from the WCC business department organized an event to present awards to five stand-out employees.

Many non-faculty staff in various departments around campus play a big role in supporting WCC instructors and streamlining processes, said Douglas Waters, the faculty chair of the business department.

To recognize these efforts, business faculty members chose five individuals who are “head and shoulders above the typical government worker,” and presented them with a thank you certificate, a gift card and a Staples “that was easy” button—meant to represent the way staff members ease the faculty members’ jobs, Douglas said.

The staff members recognized at the event include: Joy Garrett, director of curriculum and assessment, Roger Mourad, director of institutional research, Cieara Franklin, campus safety technician, Megan Keefer, human resources generalist, and Nancy Collison, innovation technologies manager in the Center for interactive Teaching and Learning (CiTL).

Collison, who has worked at WCC for almost five years, is the campus point for assistance with Blackboard and designs, schedules and leads various Blackboard training courses for students and faculty.

Collison often helps out teachers when they run into problems, making her an asset to the campus community, said Cheryl Byrne, a retail and supply chain instructor in the business department.

“When we need copies of courses made at the end of the semester, she makes that really easy,” Byrne said.

“If students need help learning how to do Blackboard, she does student training,” Byrne added. “Nancy makes it easy for you and that’s why she got the ‘easy award.’”

Starting this semester, in addition to her role in the CiTL department, Collison will be teaching an online business communication course. She taught at another school prior to coming to WCC and said she’s excited to return to a faculty role. Since much of Collison’s job is to aid Blackboard user experience, she hopes using Blackboard to teach a class will help her to better assist faculty and students.

“I wanted to get the student perspective, the teacher perspective, so I felt like I wanted to go back to where I was getting that teacher point-of-view and it would help my job be stronger,” Collison said.

Collison said she plans to take the time to use the mobile version of Blackboard more because students are using it. She hopes in this way she can better understand the student experience and take her findings back to the CiTL department and apply what she’s learned in her work there.

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