We have the pleasure of announcing the 2019 winners of the Cathy Lester IT Excellence Award and the Rising Star Award.
About the Winners
IT Excellence Award — Julie Murphy
Senior Software Developer Analyst, Workday Implementation Program
Julie Murphy has been selected to receive the 2019 Cathy Lester IT Excellence Award, which recognizes someone with an enduring track record for excellence:
Julie saved UT this year. The Workday transition was a challenging time for many people. Without Julie’s contribution, many of the successes of the Workday transition would not have been attainable. Despite having a full plate with HRMS, Julie also took time to review the changes the rest of the team was making. Julie’s review of one potential implementation opened up a way to keep the functionality but make several systems much more flexible. Julie has been the glue that held so much together over the last year, constantly updating, reviewing, and making sure we didn’t forget anything. Julie successfully did all of those things and more while working remotely.
Julie absolutely adheres to best practices. Julie’s customer service skills definitely stand out. Many of our clients reach out to her before anyone else. She is kind, respectful, and positive. Even if she feels that one option would be best, she still makes sure the client is informed of every possibility. She leads our Retrospective meetings every two weeks. This responsibility was not assigned to her. She took on this role because she knew it was crucial to our success.
Over the past year, we had a number of personnel changes. Throughout all of the change, Julie ensured that all team members felt welcome. Because Julie set a tone of inclusivity and support, we developed a strong team rapport despite the significant turnover. Julie Murphy is one of the best people I have ever worked with anywhere.
Rising Star Award — Sandy Wright
Software Developer/Analyst, Academic Information Systems
Sandy Wright has been selected to receive the 2019 Cathy Lester IT Rising Star Award, for someone early in their IT career who shows extraordinary promise:
Sandy has done an enormous amount of high quality work in less than two years. She has lead major projects; she’s made valuable contributions as a team member; she’s learned difficult business areas inside-out; she’s forged excellent relationships with business users; she’s been an education coordinator for our in-house SD training program; and she’s accomplished all this superhuman activity without showing a whiff of stress.
Immediately after training, Sandy plunged into a course scheduling project, and she was immediately productive. Soon afterward she started business analysis for a project to automate the application for students to receive the Hazlewood veterans benefit. Overlapping this effort, Sandy took over as technical lead on registration, a position of great responsibility in which she has performed with merit. Last October we committed to having new functionality ready in time for fall 2020 registration. Sandy has been an excellent project lead of a team of 5 developers, and the business users are very happy with their new web pages and functionality which will soon go into production.
About the IT Excellence Award Nominees
We would also like to congratulate the other outstanding IT professionals who were nominated for this year’s IT Excellence award. Below are some excerpts from their nominations.
Carrie Bullock
Senior Software Developer/Analyst, Academic Information Systems
In 2018, [Carrie] single-handedly completed all aspects of offering aid packages to incoming freshman. She worked diligently, with great flexibility, and met the deadline set by upper management. Carrie stepped up to a) perform extensive business analysis for how to code the new and somewhat nebulous rules, to b) completely rewrite the code in 3 weeks to meet the new deadline, and to c) send electronic notification to students. Through all of this, she has kept a great attitude, been in generally good cheer, and always available to answer questions. Carrie’s strong work ethic and attention to detail have benefited our neediest students and afforded them greater access to a UT education.
Chris Caillouet
Senior Software Developer/Analyst, Budget Office
During the past few months in particular, Chris has been an essential part of our team as we are updating our internal systems in response to Workday implementation. His daily positive attitude, great work ethic, and vast amount of knowledge have made this effort significantly easier to undertake. He will make sure the project is done properly, whether it is something as large scale as removing position information from the Budget Update Document, or something smaller like a lookup or upload tool. […] I could go on and on about Chris’s technical skills, but what really stands out about Chris are his sincerity and compassion. When he asks, “How can I help?” he really means it. I’m not just referring to customer service. He demonstrates his helpfulness and caring ways every day to his co-workers. […] He will even throw in a great joke as well, to keep everyone laughing as we push through the many complexities involved with transitioning to new systems. There is no doubt in my mind that Chris is an exemplary employee. He is a great asset to our office and to the university.
Jeremy Cumbo
Senior Information Technology Manager, University Development Office
Jeremy is one of the brightest people on our team, and has helped pioneer our move to more modern technologies. He is the person responsible for us having a fully automated testing suite, which ensures we are shipping the highest grade of code possible. Jeremy is an integral part of our team, and brings a vast amount of knowledge, experience, leadership and a great deal of enthusiasm not only to our team, but to our University.
Cesar De La Garza
Director of Development, University Development Office
Cesar is one of the brightest people on our team, not only because of his vast amount of experience and knowledge, but also because of his work ethics and integrity as a leader. Cesar has helped pioneer our bold move to more modern and innovative technologies such as the new Angular by making sure we are competent and exceed expectations in this new framework. The move to this new technology has brought with it RESULTS, as shown on the new VIP 2.0 pages. Cesar makes sure we adhere to best practices and encourages us to look for smarter and more efficient ways to complete tasks. He brings a vast amount of knowledge, experience, leadership and a great deal of enthusiasm not only to our team, but to our University.
Juan Andres Leon
Software Developer/Analyst, University Development Office
Juan Andres serves as a model employee that any manager would be proud of. He has worked diligently to familiarize himself with the subject matter and the many technological nuances pertaining to this University and this office. He works tirelessly on cultivating his skillset. This past year, Juan Andres served as an integral programmer on the Prospect system, the system that fundraisers all across campus use to coordinate the cultivation and solicitation of alumni and prospective donors. Juan demonstrated tremendous perseverance in meeting all the requirements and handling the endless number of post tweaks to accommodate all stakeholders. There is rarely not a smile on his face and his presence and positivity make the office a much more pleasant environment. He is one of my best and brightest and is truly an indispensable member of my team.
Raúl Villa
Senior Software Developer/Analyst, Academic Information Systems
What makes Raúl’s work particularly noteworthy is that he has done all of this with a quiet, efficient aplomb—if not entirely unflappable, definitely unshakable in his commitment to excellent service to the university and his colleagues… Raúl has continually risen to the demands of the task, consistently meeting key deadlines for the university’s most sensitive information system under the close scrutiny of University, System, and state leadership.
David Voegtle
Information Technology Manager, University Development Office
I have witnessed firsthand David Voegtle’s commitment to his team and to the University as a whole. He is one of the brightest people on our team, not only because of his vast programming knowledge, but also because of his work ethics and INTEGRITY. He has organized and participated in at least 5 different FYIs in the last year; he has helped pioneer our BOLD move to more modern and innovative technologies such as the new Angular framework and Artifactory; he also headed our transition from subversion to Github and the new Django for all our projects. David focuses not just on getting the job done, but on getting it done as efficiently and as cleanly as possible. He strives for GREATNESS. He brings a vast amount of knowledge, experience and a great deal of ENTHUSIASM not only to our team, but to our University.
About the Rising Star Award Nominees
We would also like to congratulate the other outstanding IT professionals who were nominated for this year’s Rising Star award. Below are some excerpts from their nominations.
Anna Derengowski
Software Developer, Technology Resources
Anna works incredibly hard and excels far beyond what her position requires. When her department was short on staff with a particular skillset, she was able to step up and take over in an area for which she wasn’t an expert. As a peer, she has been someone I look up to and can rely on if I need help or support.
Jacob Vanderlinden
Software Developer/Analyst, University Housing and Dining
With the impending switch to Workday […] Jacob was tasked with finding solutions to our internal Human Resources needs. The IT team was able to deliver a product to our HR department ahead of schedule with more robust features than were expected. Jacob’s sense of urgency coupled with his desire to exceed expectations made the project successful. His collaborative approach and his strong interpersonal skills alongside his technical abilities made this whole process seem effortless.
Please join us in congratulating Julie, Sandy, and all the talented and worthy nominees, on these very high honors! Sincere thanks to all those who took the time to nominate and support IT excellence at UT.