Three teams and 22 individuals win STAR awards

From left, Program Support Unit’s Maria Alvarez, Mariette Malessy, Bridgette Alvarez, Sherry Cooper, Julia Kalika, PJ Kelly and Kate Lyn Sutherland.

UC ANR staff appreciation and recognition awards were presented to 22 individuals and three teams on June 14 during a statewide Zoom event hosted by Human Resources.

Individual awards:

Stacey Amparano, Desert REC, for growing the Farm Smart program.

Sibani Bose, Nutrition Policy Institute, for her creative problem-solving.

Katie Churchill, UCCE Capitol Corridor, for sensitivity to the social, cultural and emotional needs of staff that clearly fosters inclusivity and a culture of open communication.

Julie Clark, UCCE Ventura County, for over 28 years of outreach on invasive insects and weeds, post-fire recovery and environmental issues.

Maria Fernandez, Development Services, for taking on tasks beyond her scope of work to help her team and bring projects to completion.

Terri Gonzalez, Kearney REC, for significantly improving organizational efficiency and productivity at Kearney, resulting in a greater level of effectiveness and customer service.

Jennifer Henkens, 4-H Capitol Corridor, for routinely going above and beyond, even in support of non-4-H colleagues.

Julia Kalika, Program Support Unit, for covering extra duties when PSU was short-staffed.

Rachel Lloyd, Office of the Controller and Business Services, for sustained exceptional performance, which helped her unit meet its goals for the client satisfaction survey.

Cristina Luquin, UCCE Central Sierra. As an Interim Program Supervisor, she has overseen four counties, five offices and 12 staff and mentored and trained all 12 staff in the CalFresh Central Sierra program.

Mario Monroy-Olivas, UCCE Tehama County, for his collaborative efforts with internal and external partners, which have resulted in expanded garden sites, an increase of extenders for nutrition education and youth engagement work.

Karen Motley, West Side Research & Extension Center, for helping the Lindcove REC staff review and improve their operational system, ensuring that they were executing tasks accurately and efficiently.

Kathleen Patrocinio, Sustainable Agricultural Research & Education Program, for coordinating the administrative and physical move of SAREP from the UC Davis campus to UC ANR, with five of seven staff positions vacant or in transition, including the director position.

Jacob Roberson, UCCE Fresno-Madera Small Farm Program, for assisting 52 farmers representing a total of 1,144 acres in applying to California's State Water Efficiency and Enhancement Program (SWEEP). The farmers received $4.3 million of incentives grant funding directly, which has been used to repair or install pump and irrigation system components.

Beatriz Rojas, UCCE Kern County, for initiating nutrition education with schools, head start classes and migrant worker families in locations where UCCE never before served clientele.

Becky Sisman, Human Resources, for helping resolve pay issues by working with ANR Payroll, HR Ops and UCPath.

Angela Urrea, Human Resources, for providing stellar customer service and support during UC ANR's unprecedented hiring boom, including identifying compliance issues and helping solve complicated wage issues.

Melissa Ussery, UCCE Sutter-Yuba, for her pivotal role in coordinating community partners to provide nutrition education for youth in Sutter County for a Sierra Health Foundation grant that had to be accomplished in a short time frame.

Karyn Utsumi, California Naturalist, for supporting 24 partner organizations in 15 counties in central and northern California. After being hired in October, she helped with 10 CalNat courses and two Climate Stewards courses.

Susan Weaver, Santa Clara County 4-H, for organizing and implementing a five-day nature camp for Latinx children K-3rd grade at Escuela Popular, a bilingual K-12 school in East San Jose. The camp increased public awareness of 4-H in the Latinx community and with new public and private partners.

Patrick West, Kearney REC, for exceptional performance in managing the physical plant staff and budget for Kearney REC.

Clara Wilshire, UCCE San Bernardino. An EFNEP educator for nearly 30 years, she promotes not only EFNEP but Master Gardeners, Master Food Preservers, and 4-H in San Bernardino County, which has expanded the reach of UCCE.

Team awards:

Program Support Unit – Bridgette Alvarez, Maria Alvarez, Sherry Cooper, Julia Kalika, PJ Kelly, Mariette Malessy and Kate Lyn Sutherland. For the UC ANR Statewide Conference, not only did the PSU provide exceptional services, they went above and beyond in response to feedback about the food nutrition and single-use ware. They were able to raise the nutrition quality of the snacks from ice cream and chips to vegetable and hummus. They were also able to persuade the facility to stop providing styrofoam single-use ware.

Nutrition Policy Institute Operations Transition Team – Kassandra Bacon, Celeste Felix, Danielle Lee, Erica Martinez Resendiz and Reka Vasicsek – for recruiting a new school district when a partner in a USDA study pulled out, then scrambling to collect student surveys and food and solid waste data over two days at 20 elementary schools for a solid 40 days of challenging work.

CalFresh Healthy Living, UCCE Tulare-Kings counties – Marina Aguilera, Elia Escalante, Grilda Gomez, Mariana Lopez, Arianna Nava, Alyssabeth Navarro and Teresa Spicer – for nurturing and leveraging strong partnerships with local organizations and school districts to collectively create meaningful and positive changes in the lives of people in their counties.

A recording of the STAR award presentations is posted at https://ucanr.edu/sites/anrstaff/All_Hands.

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