STAFF NEWS
The OIT Team
The UC Merced Office of Information Technology team is made up of 69 FTE assigned to 9 distinct functional units.
Maintaining a team atmosphere can be challenging, especially with staff spread between various campus locations and the Downtown Campus Center. Regular meetings, a dedication to top-down transparency and building a culture of leadership, and our implementation of SLACK for team-wide communication has been helpful in maintaining a shared vision of OIT's role on campus and our path going forward. You can read more about OIT's operating philosophy and our strategic planning model here. For more information about our implementation of SLACK, please visit the Workforce Planning section of this report.
We may be biased, but we think the team we've assembled is pretty phenomenal. Read on for news of OIT staff accomplishments and service in 2017.
External Awards
Sarvani Chadalapka
High Performance Computing (HPC) Administrator Sarvani Chadalapka was honored with a number of awards in 2017. Two were travel scholarships: the UCCSC Community Award for Research in IT, a University of California Office of the President scholarship awarded to research IT employees from each UC campus and medical center to support participation in the University of California Computing Services Conference (UCCSC) and the CEE-Broadening Participation Program Travel Scholarship, awarded by the XSEDE Community Engagement and Enrichment (CEE) program, this scholarship supports participation in the Practice & Experience in Advanced Research Computing (PEARC) conference.
Sarvani was also awarded the Internet2 Inclusivity Award, which recognizes talented individuals seeking opportunities to gain hands-on technical experience, and spotlights women in the field of information technology and their efforts to use technology to serve research and education at their individual institution.
Jeffrey Weekley
Director of Cyberinfrastructure and Research Computing Jeffrey Weekley was awarded a prestigious CENIC Innovations in Networking Award for Research for the Wide-Area Visualization Environment (WAVE) system at UC Merced (pictured left). You can read more about the WAVE in our Research Computing section.
Also named in the award were Greg Dawe, Principal Development Engineer for CalIT2 at UCSD; Rachel Hadley, the Senior Administrative Analyst, Design and
Construction at UC Merced; and Dr. Nicola Lercari, an Assistant Professor of World Heritage in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts at UC Merced.
Internal Awards & Recognition
Years of Service Awards
More OIT staff were honored at the 2017 Years
of Service awards than from any other unit!
Pictured left to right: OIT's Nick Hansard, Nick Dugan, Shane Middleton, Jose Magana, Edson Gonzales,
April Wheeler, Belay Tekalign, and Yulduz Akhmedzanova along with Vice Provost Gregg Camfield and other UC Merced staff.
Shane Middleton
April Wheeler
Mohammad Zaidi
Joshua Swink
Edson Gonzales
Jose Magana
Nicholas Dugan
Nicholas Hansard
Yulduz Akhmedzanova
Belay Tekalign
Star Awards
for Outstanding Service
Ron Curtis
Ronnie Vasquez
Raj Paneer
Star Awards for UCPath
These awards, bestowed by campus leadership, recognize the following OIT staff for outstanding service on the UCPath implementation project
Jason Belhumeur
Roger Borges
Codi Hutchings
John Kamminga
Raj Paneer
Michael Parrino
Jeff Pedro
Fernando Reynoso
Mohammad Zaid
Service Recognition
Awards
Chuck Aby
Abhi Agarwal
Jodon Bellofatto
Nathan Bremmer
Juan Garcia Martinez
Edson Gonzales
Keith Hughes
John Kamminga
Shane Middleton
Gisele Murillo
Robert Werner
Will Wilcox
Chancellor's Innovation Award
Service Desk's Jenelle Batchelor and Matthew Mitchell took home third place and a $1,000 prize in the 2017 UC Merced Chancellor's Innovation Award competition.
Their winning submission was Rufus Time, the OIT scheduling application that makes it possible for students, faculty and staff to schedule their own appointments for OIT support and service. Rufus Time has been active since June 2016. To date, UC Merced community members have used Rufus Time to schedule IT support 4,901 times!
Learn more about Rufus Time in our video below (note: video won't appear for mobile viewers).
Promotions
BUSINESS SERVICES
Ronnie Vasquez
promoted to
IT Financial Analyst Supervisor
CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE &
SECURITY SERVICES
Nick Hansard
promoted to
Director of Cloud Services, Infrastructure, and Security Operations
New Hires
NETWORK
& VOIP
Abhimanyu Agarwal
Network Engineer
Giselle Murillo
Network Engineer
ENTERPRISE DATA SERVICES
Julie George
Enterprise Data Services Manager
Dave Stevenson
Application Programmer
CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE & SECURITY SERVICES
Kevin Cann
Senior Systems Administrator
ACADEMIC & EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES
Ramsin Tamraz
Video Projects Coordinator
SERVICE DESK
Jerry Chavez
Service Desk Support Technician
Eric Rahilly
Service Desk Support Technician
Staff Service
0
0
Marisela Angel
UC Merced Supply Chain
Redesign Planning Committee
Ron Curtis
UCPath & OnBase Operations
Communications Group
Julie George
University of California Business
Intelligence Collaboration Group
(UC Merced rep)
Codi Hutchings
Chancellor’s Advisory Committee
on Queer Issues
UC Merced
Transgender Resources
Committee
0
Kent Carpenter
University of California
Computing Services
Conference Ambassador
Information Technology
Service Management Educause
Consortium Group
Nick Dugan
University of California
IT Security Committee
(UC Merced rep)
Joan Holmquist
University of California
EducationTechnology
Leadership Committee
(UC Merced rep)
University of California
Electronic. Accessibility
Committee
(UC Merced rep)
Board of Directors,
Directors of Educational
Technology/California Higher Education (DET/CHE)
Matt Cato
University of California
Cross-Campus Enrollment
System (CCES)
Change Control Board
Matt Faulkner
University of California
IT Architecture Committee
(UC Merced rep)
Keith Hughes
Chancellor's Advisory
Committee on Sustainability
Melissa Tessier
Secretary, UC Merced
Staff Assembly
Jeffrey Weekley
University of California
Research IT Committee
(UC Merced rep)