Click here to watch the 2023 AP Awards Ceremony

Nominees:

• Tina Barnikow
• Mary Brittain
• Jill Craig
• Nykia Gaines
• Katharine Harmon
• Aaron Haight
• Julia Mattox
• Lawrence Meredith
• Elisa Ortega Schultz
• Brenda Sain
• Karol Tiemersma

This is the highest honor bestowed upon Administrative Professional staff at Grand Valley State University. The award recognizes the singularly outstanding contributions by a staff member to the University, professional field, and surrounding community. The recipient embodies the University's mission, vision, and values and bring distinction to GVSU through their work. 

Mary Brittain

Mary Brittain is the Associate Director of Admissions and Recruitment, with over 40 years of experience at GVSU. She began her work as an entry-level staff member and is now in a leadership position in one of the most demanding and high-producing areas at GVSU. Mary's work is often behind the scenes and can go unnoticed, but her work is vital to the functioning of the university. Mary is a team player, a leader, has an amazing work ethic, and is committed to doing her work well and always with a positive attitude. She has dedicated countless hours to system implementations and providing data to offices across the university, with a career that has touched over a million student records. There is no room for error in the work that Mary or her team does. Successfully admitting students is both critical and complex work. Mary has shown tremendous leadership dealing with change, problem-solving, and innovation. Her positive attitude and leadership have a lasting impact on GVSU, and she is most deserving of this award.

Nominees:

• Chris Babbitt
• Emily First
• Jennie Glynn
• Myesha Melvin-Gholston
• Benjamin Rhodes
• Brianna Slager

This award recognizes an individual AP staff member who shows a commitment to serve as a strong mentor to GVSU students beyond the person's normal professional responsibilities and regardless of their professional role. The nominee is a person who demonstrates trustworthiness and skills with students in the areas of advising, advocacy, referrals, listening, accessibility, and motivation. Nominations for this award must be either made or supported by at least one student.

Chris Babbitt

Chris Babbitt is the Assistant Director of the Career Center. Chris has enthusiastically provided support and guidance to both students and alumni as they navigate finding careers. It is clear when talking to him that this is more than just a job. Chris is incredibly passionate and caring about helping students to find success in their careers. Even during busy seasons, Chris provides resume/cover letter reviews or general career advice. He always encourages students to reach for the stars and leverages his network and his position to pass student information along to companies. Multiple alumni provided letters of support for Chris’s nomination, citing Chris as a key to their professional success.

Nominees:

• Amber Roberts
• Bobby Springer

Established to recognize an individual AP staff member who serves as an example to others through a commitment to diversity beyond the scope of their professional responsibilities. The nominee is a person who demonstrates through action the ideals of cultural diversity and interculturalism, and who helps others gain greater understanding of diversity and interculturalism.

Bobby Springer

Bobby Springer is the Director of K-12 Pathways and Associate Director of TRIO Veterans Upward Bound and has 30-plus years of experience that he brings to the table. His experience in the field of DEI, but also multiculturalism, has allowed him to leave a lasting impact on the community he serves. He previously served in the Office of Multicultural Affairs, supporting and producing student-centered events that emphasized multiculturalism. Those events included programs such as Black History Month and the university-wide, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration. Bobby ensured there were opportunities at the forefront for the university community to experience cultural heritage celebrations on display. Later, he ventured on a new journey and became the Director of K-12 Pathways in July 2017. In serving the K-12 community, he ensured that the students were connected to the Office of Multicultural Affairs by introducing them to programs such as Laker Familia and Black Excellence. He used outreach and pre-college programming to ensure they could develop connections and resources to pursue their educational goals. To listen and learn from the work that Bobby has done is insightful. His passion for education has led to a network of meaningful connections with the students, faculty, and staff. He has a legacy that will surely continue to inspire our growing campus community on the importance of advocacy and education.

Nominees: 

• Kevin Kotlewski
• Melissa Selby-Theut
• Jill Wolfe

This award recognizes an individual AP staff member whose innovative ideas and practices benefit the University in a specific way. This could include methods to improve cost-efficiency, changes in procedures, creating new programs or services, or leading new initiatives.

Melissa Selby-Theut

Melissa Selby-Theut is an Associate Director of the University Counseling Center, and the Director of Prevention and Community Education. As a Licensed Social Worker, Melissa has led projects to enhance GVSU's mental health screening across our campuses. Thanks to her, there are two mental health screening kiosks available to students, faculty, and staff: one near the 20/20 desk in the Kirkhof Center and one in the marketplace area of the DeVos Center on the Pew Grand Rapids Campus. In addition to the kiosks, the Counseling Center added virtual components to improve accessibility, and curated art installations to promote mental health screening. Through her work, there are now 16 screening access points across the campuses and the University Counseling Center hosts campus-wide screening days four times per year. This year, Melissa has provided 3,069 students access to mental health screening and related resources.

Nominees:

• Melissa Baker-Boosamra
• Tina Barnikow
• Joseph Bitely
• Alison Christensen
• Yumiko Jakobcic
• Stacey Lefevre
• Lawrence Meredith
• Shannon Owen
• Bill Widmaier

This award recognizes an individual AP staff member who has gone above and beyond professional responsibilities in contributing their expertise and service to at least one of the following: (1) the GVSU community, (2) the professional organization of their discipline, or (3) the local/national/international community.

For the 2023 Awards, the AP Awards Committee chose to present two individuals with the 2023 Service to Community Award. These individuals have each provided significant contributions to GVSU’s community and are forging lasting relationships with our Lakers.

Shannon Owen

Shannon Owen is the Director of GVSU’s Northern Michigan Programs at the Traverse City Regional Center. She has shown a deep and abiding commitment to providing opportunities for underserved populations, including women, first-generation students, and students experiencing poverty in the areas of education and healthcare. Shannon is actively connecting the Traverse City community to GVSU through a number of community initiatives.  Shannon serves on the Board of Directors of the Zonta Club of Traverse City (which advocates for greater opportunities for women), and the Traverse Connect Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Committee She is an organizer of the biannual Health Forum of Northern Michigan. Her work is actively expanding GVSU’s programs and enabling students in Northern Michigan.

Bill Widmaier

Bill Widmaier is GVSU’s Associate Registrar. While his work is largely behind the scenes, the impact of his work has touched every student, faculty, and staff member at GVSU. Bill’s talents in report writing and data accuracy provide leadership in the implementation of programmatic expansion that centers around student learning opportunities, such as the application of prior learning credits. A few examples of Bill’s project include providing accurate data in EAB Navigate, supporting an increase in international student attendance, and GVSUs Veteran reporting, which has allowed GVSU to become a Veteran-Friendly Campus. Bill plays a major role in anything involving student records, and actively supports the faculty and students throughout the year at various events. His nomination was accompanied by 12 letters of support, each recognizing the significant and lasting contributions that Bill has made to GVSU’s community.

Nominees:

• 2022 Commencement Planning Team
• Advising Initiatives Team
• DEI-AB Project Team
• Financial Reporting Team
• LMS Blackboard Ultra Migration Project Team
• SLATE Implementation Team

This award recognizes the work of an ad-hoc team of AP staff members from two or more departments that accomplish a project benefiting the University. While the nominated project may be ongoing or not yet complete, nominations should emphasize work of staff members across unit lines during the past year.

Award Winner:

Slate Implementation Team

Team Members include:

• Jennifer Allard
• Philip Batty
• Jared Bravewater
• Mary Brittain
• Katherine Fay
• Tracey James-Heer
• Thomas Pikes
• Ben Rapin
• Melanie Retberg
• Brandon Ridge
• Jesse Roe
• Daniel Slaughter
• Vicky Thelen
• Nick Viau

Slate Implementation Team

The Slate Implementation Team collaborated across multiple units at GVSU to implement the Slate tool for networking with prospective students. Slate is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform that allows the Enrollment Development Division and GVSU to stay connected with incoming students by documenting student interactions and providing quality data. Slate streamlines many processes to organize, automate, track, report, and analyze marketing strategies. This saves time, minimizes errors, and reduces duplicating efforts while providing GVSU with a robust tool for monitoring enrollment. Many units at GVSU were involved in the implementation and testing including Admissions, University Marketing, Information Technology, Institutional Analysis, and the Registrar's Office.