We are happy to announce that Sandy Masters and Bryce Steel, Jack Zuefle and Roman Nitze are the winners of this year's departmental staff awards.

Sandy Masters has been the administrative assistant to the MRI Director for the last four years. She serves as the main contact person for the activities of the MRI, and her responsibilities include preparing and overseeing the MRI budget, coordinating the Distinguished Visitor program and the Radó and Zassenhaus lectures, and managing our many long and short term visitors. She manages to make each visitor feel honored to have been invited.  She also maintains the MRI website as well as all the records of the MRI.

In addition, Sandy helps with the Department's SAMMS program in the summer, taking care of arrangements for the student participants, including their reimbursement. Sandy has performed all these duties with efficiency and care, and in friendly manner. She is a highly valued member of our staff!

Bryce Steel joined our IT group two years ago, and heads our Desktop Support Group. This group handles the day-to-day support and maintenance of the Department's desktop computers, and provides prompt, efficient, and friendly IT support to faculty, staff, and students. He has been instrumental in raising the level of support of our Windows customers up to that of our Mac customers. Bryce has been doing a wonderful job, and his friendliness and professionalism are much appreciated.

Roman Nitze joined the Department two years ago, stepping into a complex job as the Graduate Program Coordinator. He has since transformed it in a number of ways, digitizing wherever possible the myriad tasks handled by the Graduate Office: renewal letters, student records and the access to these records, many parts of the admission process. He wrote the graduate portion of the new departmental web page. He maintains constructive relationships with various units and people outside of math (the Graduate School, Graduate Admissions, Arts and Sciences IT, and other coordinators). He contributes crucially to the smooth running of our graduate program. Roman is a highly valued member of our staff!

Jack Zuefle has run an amazingly efficient, reliable, and economical print shop for the Department for many years. His shop provides copying services for the faculty and student support materials for the Math Advising Office, the MSLC, and Orientation Services; and produces tens of thousands of examinations securely and reliably for the Department and several other units on campus, at a significantly lower per page cost than commercial and other University vendors.

In recent years, Jack has assumed additional roles and responsibilities, including procurement, general ledger activities, and building coordination. He is friendly and conscientious, and a pleasure to work with!