2020 Staff and Faculty Awards

As the Spring 2020 semester ended under COVID-19 quarantine, the College of Business took time online to recognize this year’s outstanding faculty and staff. The award ceremony, presented in Teams, may have been unlike any awards event in the College’s history. What remains and resonates are the much-deserved accolades, as recognized by our students and peers.

Faculty Awards

“The winner of the Faculty Research Award goes to the faculty member who has made the greatest research contribution over the past four years—as measured by both the number and the quality of research publications. This year’s winner lives up to that challenge of publishing top-notch research. In the past four years, [Mahesh] published ten HQ journal articles and two elite journal articles–with four of those publications in 2019 alone.”

Faculty Research Award: Mahesh Gupta

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“The winner of the Undergraduate Teaching Award goes to the faculty member who has demonstrated excellence in undergraduate teaching. This year, TWO faculty members were so excellent, the committee simply couldn’t break the tie.”

Undergraduate Teaching Award: Jenna Haugen and Greg Reinhardt

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The winner of the Graduate Teaching Award goes to the faculty member who has demonstrated excellence in graduate teaching. Of course, the winner has received high teaching scores from their students. Comments include “Great professor. Definitely very communicative and easy to approach…Makes the course content relevant to real life, understandable, and FUN!”

Graduate Teaching Award: Andrew Manikas

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The winner of the Faculty Service Award goes to the faculty member who has demonstrated a strong commitment to service. This year’s winner served the Department, College, University, Community, and Discipline. Jenna Haugen spearheads our Elevate Portland initiative, the Signature Partnership for the College of Business. She connects our Cardinals with Portland Elementary school students to help teach both the importance of business principles through events such as Lemonade Day, Shark Tank, Earth Day, and Career Day. Jenna also teaches as part of Project BUILD, has served on multiple search committees, and chairs two national committees including a student writing competition. She is passionate about giving back and finding ways to give a leg up to the underdog.

Faculty Service Award: Jenna Haugen

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The winner of the Overall Faculty Excellence Award goes to the faculty member who has demonstrated excellence in all areas of their work. This year’s winner delivered in research, teaching, and service. This person was excellent in the classroom—both undergraduate and graduate. This person is a strong researcher with an elite publication and other work under review. And this person lived a year of service – being an invited reviewer, chairing committees, running faculty searches, delivering talks at universities around the country, and leading one of our most active Centers in the College.

Outstanding Faculty Member: Steve Gohmann

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Staff Awards

Staff Excellence Award: Donna Clark

“Donna has been the Center’s cool and steady hand. She is always positive, solution-focused, shines a light on others, and appears to have a never-ending supply of ‘can do’ attitude…She is also a vocal cheerleader for the Economics department, the College of Business, and the University as a whole…She makes the College a better place to work, every day.”

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Cardinal Spirit Award: Eileen Davis, Nora Scobie, Stacy Schoen

“I have seen Eileen’s plate get overloaded throughout the year. However, despite her personal and professional load, she has ALWAYS made time to speak, not only with me but with any staff member or student who comes to pop in her doorway… She goes to bat for her staff in Ulmer, but as well for other staff members in FUMM. In short, Eileen is a joy to work with. I don’t know anyone in our office that has not felt that Eileen has tried to build a relationship with them and come across as a caring individual.”

“Stacy is always willing to help and find a solution to whatever comes our way! A positive demeanor and looks at the glass as half-full and full of optimism!” 

“[Nora’s] commitment to helping students, staff, faculty, and prospective students is second to none… She is also a compassionate advisor to students and parents, a detailed planner, a thoughtful and caring supervisor, and a tireless advocate for anyone who feels they have no voice.”

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Special Recognition Award: Melissa Campbell, Kathy Gosser, Abby Koenig, Dale McIntosh, and Andrew Wright, (for their work on building online course resources for instructors during COVID-19)

“When the COVID-19 crisis hit, we had to get our courses up and running online, and we had to do it FAST! To put it in perspective, we had to move from offering about 30 classes online to 160 classes in about ten days. And most of our faculty had never taught online courses before… I can’t imagine any other group of individuals who could have exuded more positivity in a time of crisis when so many other people were stressed out; who could have elevated their peers better through mentoring and confidence-building; who could have cared more about sustaining our critical mission of quality education in the College AND cared more about the human beings teaching and learning in these new online classes; and who could have done a better job at moving the proverbial mountains to get it done.”