Welcome. We're returning to fully on-site work five days a week.

[LAUGH]

All right, OK, welcome. My name's John Dunlap. I'm the chief human resources officer for the UMass System Office. So glad to have all of you here with us. I'd like to welcome you. It's wonderful that we can all be here and be here together in person. I want to do a big shout out to anyone who is not in pajama bottoms or wearing full length pants.

[LAUGH]

Special welcome to President Meehan and the members of the senior staff, all the presenters, award recipients, and everyone who is joining us here today. Really thrilled to see such a great turnout. I want to start just by talking for a minute about the awards and the recognitions that we're giving today so that you have some context. If you're like me, and you go to an event like this, early on you say, "Hey, where's my award? Why am I not getting one or who's being acknowledged?" and then I get resentful, and it detracts from the rest of the morning.

[LAUGH]

So I want to just explain that for many years, probably more than 25, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has had an awards program called the Commonwealth Performance Recognition Program. And what's special about this is that any employee can nominate someone. You can nominate someone you supervise, someone who supervises you. You can nominate a group of people who worked on a team together. You can nominate a coworker who just makes a difference for you on a day-to-day basis.

The Commonwealth then reviews and grants most of those awards. And then if it's a lean year, they give you just a certificate. And if it's a flush year, they give you a certificate in a blue cardboard envelope that you can keep in.

[LAUGH]

So we recognize that probably everybody in this room has done many things in the past year or two years the whole time that they've worked here that make an enormous difference for the university and the university's mission and for the quality of work life. So everybody is being recognized today. But the special group of people being called up are those people whose coworkers has gone through the process of submitting a nomination to the Commonwealth and having that approved by the Commonwealth. And of course, as we go into future years, we welcome everybody to consider submitting nominations.

I also want to talk about the recognition for years of service. What has been rolling up on the screen as you came in as a video that was put together by a great group of people, which recognizes those employees who have 15 years of service with the university and 20 years of service. Their names are also on one of the posters in the back if you want to look at that. And we will call up those individuals who have 25 years of service.

Just one clarifying fact that the years of service is based on your years of service as of December 31 of the year that has just ended. So if you're not here because your anniversary happened after that, we have not forgotten you. You are not off the payroll. You will see your name up here next year when you get back. But but in all sincerity, I do think that the most special part of this program for me is hearing people talk about their coworkers. I find that very moving.

And I also find that it is a wonderful survey of all of the great work that is done by the president's office when you listen to colleagues talk about their coworkers. When we've done it before, I've learned a lot about the different things that people are working on. I do want to do some rules. We do have a tight schedule. We do want to be done by 11:45. If you are coming up to speak just a reminder that Carol Dugard, Carol, you want to give us a wave, right, is going to give you, you have five minutes she's going to give you a two minute warning.

So when you have two minutes left, she's going to give you the warning sign. When you have one minute left, she's going to give you a look.

[LAUGH]

If you keep talking out when your time's up, she's going to dock you some of your credible service towards your pension calculation.

[LAUGH]

So you want to make sure that you wrap up on time. All right, great. So with that, I have the honor and privilege of introducing President Marty Meehan.

[APPLAUSE]

Thanks, John. Thank you very much, John. And good morning. I guess if I interpret what John had to say if you're not getting an award, you got a problem with your co-workers.

[LAUGH]

In any event, I'm delighted to be here and thank-- I want to thank all of you for being here as well. I want to start with on a serious note and ask for a moment of silence for us to remember our colleague, Martha Johnson who as you all know, passed away this week, if we could have a moment of silence, please.

Thank you. So we've been through a difficult time. And we all have. But the first thing that I want to say is thank you to each and every one of you. It's actually remarkable if you think about our operation of $3.7 billion operation, 75,000 students graduating, 18,000 students each year during the pandemic, third largest employer in the Commonwealth. And it really has been a remarkable achievement that we are emerging from the historic crises in the world. And we're actually a pretty strong university.

And the credit for that is with each and every one of you and our faculty members and everyone else that has gotten us through, and our students, the perseverance, dedication. I just want to thank all of you for that. The other thing is interesting about it is we've really learned how to use technology in a way that we hadn't in the past. And frankly, the workplace is going to change forever as a result of going through this experience.

And it's not just true in higher education as you know. It's true pretty much in every field. So the world has changed dramatically. But I want to thank all of you for getting us through. The other thing is that the work that all of you do has it's important in that we as a university system are constantly looking to find ways to become more efficient and to find a way to try to keep the cost of UMass education reasonable, affordable.

We're trying to put more money into scholarships, financial aid so that we're able to be a public research university that is number one nationally ranked. And all four of our undergraduates campuses are nationally ranked to be ranked as highly as we can, it also to be affordable. And a lot of the work that each and every one of you are doing gets to that affordability question.

And as all of you know, it's a challenge to try to get five institutions that operated on their own for the majority of the time they've been around. And Amherst has been around since 1863. Lowell was around 140 or 130 or so years before it got-- goodbye. So all of these institutions have been operating on their own. So when we start talking about shared services and all of that, there's a natural inclination to push back on the part of the campuses.

And when you all perform the way you do perform, it sends a message to the campuses that you know what? This is working. So when I hear from chancellors and from campuses how well something is going on, we saved money on this, and boy, you folks in the president's office was right about this or that, it's each and every one of you that deserve the credit for it. And we had to increase tuition by 2 and 1/2% recently, the board did.

And what's interesting is just the amount of money we pay our employees in the cost of living that administration and finance gave us, the parameters for the unit raises, our share of that, the 2 and 1/2% doesn't even cover that, doesn't even cover that. So my point is that we are becoming a much more efficient organization. And I want to thank each and every one of you and recognize each and every one of you. I haven't gotten a warning yet, so I-- OK. [LAUGH]

But it's really due to the innovation, the creativity, the dedication, the resilience, and the ability and willingness of all of you to collaborate with each other through departments but also to collaborate with the campuses. And that collaboration has made all the difference with this university. The way you collaborate with each other is noteworthy. I don't think it's a surprise to any of you if you've worked at big companies like Raytheon and others, oftentimes, silos, you end up with silos focus on talking to one another.

Well in higher education, it's known for silos that it's really difficult to get the type of collaboration that you need. So you have been, I think, committed to breaking down those silos. And it's made all the difference in the world. Intentional attention that we've committed to diversity, equity inclusion, we're a unique time in history. And we have a responsibility to really commit ourselves to DEI and to never ever believe that we are completely diverse that we've made it.

It is a constant thing that we have to be focused on in the president's office but across all of our campuses. It's really, really important that we keep that up. And I want to compliment all of you. And John, I want to compliment you because I participated in some of the DEI events that you've had. And I've learned a lot. I've learned a lot about the diversity of our colleagues. I've learned a lot about individual people that work here and what their backgrounds are. And we all know what our backgrounds are.

But until we have meetings like this, we hear it's remarkable the backgrounds of the people and diversity of the people that we have. I mention the fact that we have become more efficient with saving money with saving millions and millions of dollars. We have a connected workforce even when we're remote. And it's actually remarkable to see how the workforce has changed. But we're going to have to-- we're not going to have to travel as much as we used to. So the world has changed.

I want to thank and congratulate those who are getting awards. And John, if I had known I didn't have to wear a tie, I wouldn't have worn one. But I want to thank each and every one of you and for your commitment to the University of Massachusetts. And the last point that I'll make is I really miss being on a campus. And so part of the challenge we all have in the president's office is we're not on a campus.

So we're not seeing every day the transformation of young people, some older people that come through our doors that literally are getting a chance to achieve their full potential in life. And it's a little tougher for us whether it's one beacon or whether it's here in Shrewsbury. But make no mistake about it, when we graduate 18,000 students coming up in the next few weeks, part of the credit for what has happened for those students and for their families you their lives, you deserve the credit for it because we would not be as affordable.

It's a difficult operation to run. And each and every one of you to contribute enormously to that. So thank you very much and it's great to see you this morning. Great to be here in person, too.

[APPLAUSE]

Thank you, President Meehan. I have the honor of announcing the first award. And I'll talk a little bit about it. And then I'll call out the individual's names. And when I call out the individual's names, and if you could come up, try not to trip on anything and get your certificate over here. And then we'll take a group picture.

The first award goes to the UITS DEIA Collaborative Group. This is a group that was put together two years ago now. In UITS, they're focused on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility issues. They've conducted training, both for UITS and made that same training available to the rest of the president's office in areas like engaging in diversity, and inclusion, and equity for organizational change.

They've put together fantastic events like International Women's Day for the past several years and have also done a host of pop-up events, lunch-and-learns on things like transgender visibility. Another huge accomplishment of theirs has been the work that has done with others on the diversity, equity, and inclusion website for the president's office.

So I want to say a couple of things about these folks-- the things that I find most impressive about it. I would like to tell you, as the HR director, that I came up with this and led in this area. But the truth was, they did. And they wanted their employer to be doing more in this area. So they led. And I think that's incredibly impressive.

And they raised the bar for us on what the expectations are for the employer to be engaged in this area. And I think they deserve great credit for that. I also think that we have to acknowledge, when we see all of these events, that there is a tremendous amount of work going on behind the scenes in order to make that happen.

And a lot of that work is happening by people who have a whole nother full-time job that isn't DEIA work. But they're doing it because of their personal commitment to it. And as I've worked closely with them, and President Meehan has now appointed president's office DEIA team, that I serve on with a number of these individuals, what impresses me most is the simple commitment to wanting everybody who works here to feel welcome here.

And it is that guiding principle that governs their work. So I offer them my gratitude and their congratulations on this award. I'd like them to come up as I call their names-- Vanita Chawla, Dee Cogliandro, Kristina England-- and again, come up and go over to Kelly and Katie-- Yara Hentz, Kerri Hudzikiewicz, Nick Jain, Michael Milligan, Megan Momtaheni, Shahriar Panahi, and Martha Pearson. Let's give them around of applause.

[APPLAUSE]

Thank you, all.

It's my privilege now to introduce our next presenter, Kelly Gregory, Associate University Controller.

Thank you, John. Good morning, everybody. I have the pleasure today to introduce or present Deirdre Delaney with our individual award. I had nominated her back in the fall. This was a period of time where her role had changed and continue to change almost daily, it seems like.

And when I first started with the controller's office, she was in a role as a financial analyst. And she was getting ready to take on more tasks related to grants management.

Grants management wasn't really something she was that familiar with. It was something new to her, there's compliance requirements, there's Uniform Guidance Audit-- all brand new. But it's something that she was willing to accept, that she was excited to learn more, and she really wanted to develop her skills.

So this time also presented-- kind of marked the beginning of a lot of turnover within the controller's office. So at times there was times Deirdre was covering multiple roles. So she was doing two roles at once, managing her to the day-to-day tasks. And her exposure to new projects really started with this really deeper dive into understanding grants management.

And then we said, OK, well how do you feel about accounting standards? Let's do some accounting research and maybe some of you have heard about GASB 87. And if you haven't, please talk to Deirdre, because she is now an expert on some of these accounting standards. So she's always been willing to embrace each new challenge that we present her with.

In the midst of learning all these new concepts, she was always tasked with onboarding new staff, helping to data mine when special projects came up, putting together slide decks when management was requesting special information. And, for me, she was just invaluable, because it was my first year going through a first year-end-close here. Getting through that year-end-close process, getting those financial statements issued-- she was just invaluable member to the team to that point.

Her commitment to our team has really allowed her to just educate new staff, help departments within the president's office, as well as those in the individual campuses. So we're always making sure that internal, external deadlines are being met. I can't thank Deirdre enough for doing that.

Despite all these challenges and changes that have happened over the past year, Deirdre has always stayed consistent. She always has a positive attitude. She has a willingness to help out our team whenever we ask her for a new project. And whatever we can dream up to throw her way she embraces that challenge.

So this, in combination with just her innate ability to translate data and apply that to her system knowledge, has just proved invaluable to our team. So I really want to take this time to say thank you to Deirdre for being such a valuable member of our team. And we're very lucky to have you. With that, Deirdre.

[APPLAUSE]

Thank you.

Sorry to make you keep getting--

President Meehan's going to more than get his steps in. We put him over here, even though he has to be over there. My privilege to introduce a member of the human resources team, my friend and colleague, Jacquie Kitler.

I'm really short, so-- can you hear me? OK, good. So hello, everyone. So please bear with me, as this is the first in-person presentation I've done in, I think over two years. So it's a little different when you're on Zoom and you're talking to a bunch of boxes. But today is the real thing for me, so bear with me on that.

The only saving grace is that I have very strict orders from Katie and Carol that I keep this to five minutes. So hopefully it's meaningful.

So as you may remember last year at the Zoom employee recognition ceremony, I nominated the onsite transition team. That consisted of about 27 or so employees across the president's office who were essential in planning our safe return to the office.

Although there were many that helped in that initiative, this year I wanted to recognize four specific employees, some part of the bigger committee and some not, that went above and beyond to help welcome our employees back for their first days back in the office. They were not only the first to volunteer, there was never a complaint from them-- just always there to jump in when I needed them.

And when it came to these first days back in the office, you name it, they thought of it-- moving of offices and cubicles, hand sanitizer at every desk, gloves, masks, welcome back signs, balloons, videos, food. Reliability is hard to come by, so I wanted to personally acknowledge them and thank them for being colleagues that I can always count on.

It's rare to come across people who are so dedicated and trustworthy. And they should know that their efforts have not gone unnoticed. Having them on my team has made all the difference. And during this time of uncertainty and craziness, they never disappointed.

Well, I could stand here for hours talking about how great they are, but I'll end by saying, it is both an honor and a privilege to work alongside these four. And I personally thank you for bringing your best to work every single day and helping make the transition back to the office not only a safe one but a pleasurable one as well.

I'm honored to announce the recipients of the Welcome Back Team Award to Jillian Warren from UPST, Cheryl Millett from human resources, Amy Thompson from treasury, and Patty Vantine from the building authority.

[APPLAUSE]

I don't know how to use this. --or taking photos--

[LAUGHTER]

We all have.

All right. Thank you. We all have different skill sets. I'd like to introduce Kelly Weeks to present the next award.

Thank you, John. Hi, good morning. It's good to see everyone in person here. So I nominated Julie Kenny for a service award for her dedication to service excellence and for taking the lead on the technical configuration and support of the Zoom webinar platform.

Her initiative enabled high-level remote meetings to occur and be broadcast to the public while remaining secure. COVID-19 was the catalyst for change and moved all of UMPO remote. Due to these restrictions, Julie went above and beyond to help execute and support remote meetings for all.

Throughout the last year, Julie has been instrumental in the technically hosting and supporting these virtual meetings and webinars, ensuring that participants were trained and are trained in Zoom web conferencing best practices, especially where the mute and unmute button is.

Julie worked tirelessly and continues to work tirelessly in the Zoom dashboard-- behind the scenes nobody sees it-- to provide the absolute best and secure Zoom virtual experience during large webinars and meetings. So it is my absolute pleasure to present Julie with her award. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

Do I get my two minutes for my acceptance speech? I'd like to thank my mother and my father. Thank you. Thank you.

Congratulations, Julie. Next presenter is Chief Information Officer Michael Milligan.

Good morning, and thank you for allowing me to present and shine the light on an outstanding group of people. I'm going to start with the "what." Something up there called Control-M. The definition that I've been given, it's a multi-application scheduling tool, which allows job dependencies between applications. Does that help?

It means if we were to think about our enterprise application services that we run through our PeopleSoft application and platform, like HR, finance, our student administration, and you think about those as the brains of what we do to provide service to the university and the system, think about Control-M as being the heartbeat-- the thing that ensures that we're paying people on time, that we're getting the students registered, and that we're taking care of the people that work at this University.

In short, it's an extremely important application unto itself. And I'm proud of the team by the means in which they were able to upgrade such a high-impact application last year. The team not only upgraded the system, a critical enterprise application, but they ensured their commitments were made. It was done on time.

They ensured service never went down. And it allowed all of us to test our disaster recovery, in which I have to give the team a huge check plus. We now have an updated enterprise application which provides stability, security, and ongoing automation-- three huge things as we in IT think about the jobs that we do.

So I'm proud to recognize the following team for their outstanding work-- Abdi Ali, Zoila Altamirano, Richard Aseltine, Dee Cogliandro, Rick Cote, Damian Esposito, Yara Hentz, Kerri Hudzikiewicz, Matthew Kozlowski, Michael Magee, Debra Martin, Roger Rice, Michael Rooney, Aaron Rubinton, Kathy Sawyer, Dave Snigier, Euc Velazco, and Carol Walsh.

It's with my extreme gratitude and appreciation.

[APPLAUSE]

Yeah. Taller in the back. Yeah. Taller in the back.

You want me to take a knee?

Whatever works.

Taller in the back.

Ready? Thank you.

Thank you.

The next presenter is Director of Procurement Operations Brian Girard.

Thank you. And before I begin, I just want to let everyone know, I did not have an advance copy of President Meehan's remarks. So today, I'm honored to nominate Bonnie Mathias for this award.

Coinciding with the launch of the UPST, we had an upcoming project. We had just awarded the bank card RFP. So we had a new bank card provider right at the same time as the UPST was launching. So our focus on this was really the future of the program, not really worried about the existing programs that lived on the campuses, but really presented a great opportunity to start anew.

So not only did Bonnie lead the design of the new program, she led the training and information sessions for the campuses and users. This single, efficient one program was a direct result of her diligence, knowledge, resourcefulness, personal drive to just get it right.

She was able to take advantage of the great partners in this room to create this utilizing SalesForce, DocuSign, Blackboard, and other programs into the model to be able to have a program that can be done remotely. Personally, I'd always seen the launch of this program as one of the first initiatives of the UPST.

What we'd be able to do, this was a great opportunity for us to roll out a single-platform standards processes across the University. Without Bonnie, none of this would have been possible and been very difficult to even come close to duplicating it. Bonnie is a consummate professional that has supported the University for over 24 years.

Knowledge, skills, determination to always find the best solutions is why she's earned this award from both the commonwealth and the university. Her attitude and willingness is second to none. Many of you have been working with her for a long time.

Unfortunately, shortly before Bonnie was notified that I had nominated her, she gave me a notice that she's retiring. So she is retiring in July. And then when I told her when the awards ceremony was, she let me know she's on vacation. [LAUGHTER]

So for those who know Bonnie, none of this is a surprise because she is literally the last person to ever want personal recognition or award of achievement. So on her behalf, I'd like to ask both Leon and Angel to come up and accept the award on her behalf.

[APPLAUSE]

Thank you all. Congratulations.

Our next presenter is Chief Procurement Officer David Cho.

Morning. Thank you. I'm actually thrilled to highlight an impressive team of university colleagues who've modernized the way UMass sources technology. And to provide a little bit of background, we spend about $110 million a year in technology expenditures through 1,600 different providers.

And, in many cases, there's been significant administrative headaches to manage such a large portfolio. There's certainly duplicative purchases, and frankly it just-- I think we were paying above market. It was pretty apparent.

And the opportunity to streamline all of this with a select number of strategic partners was just a terrific opportunity. So a lot of effort was put into this to analyze this opportunity. A cross-functional team across the president's office and leaders across all the campuses were involved.

It was a significant amount of time and energy that had to be burned to do an activity like this in the midst of the pandemic. But you have this dedicated group that wanted to enable the university to buy better, faster, cheaper.

And this working group-- the value added reseller working group-- worked over 18 months on a system-wide bid process, which UMass is currently receiving the benefits of. We estimated about a $2 and 1/2 million a year cost reduction. We're probably going to exceed that. I won't get into the granular details of the efficiencies, but there are a ton.

The engagement allow UMass to maximize service levels. We actually dictated what we wanted out of these vendors instead of reacting to what they were offering. We actually proposed very progressive solutions.

And so to have this group here, I want to just share some stats-- 200 requirements presented, 6,000 items that were bid, 10 rounds of negotiations, 20 team members and others who are continuing to build on this beyond this core team that's being recognized here-- Pam and Ashley, for example.

But it took 18 months to execute this. And that means 18 months of also working with me. So I think that in itself deserves a special recognition. I'm going to create an award, President Meehan, with John. It's going to be called the CPA Crazy Patient Award. This group was extremely patient and were ready to reinvent themselves to launch this platform.

So it was a program that was reviewed also by third parties. We had Hackett, Gartner, ClearEdge, that claimed that this was one of the most progressive strategic initiatives that they've seen in the VAR space, whether it's private sector or public sector. And so, I think this project is actually a great roadmap of what we can do with collective intelligence, with working together. We truly are better together.

And I think this group of professionals has been able to demonstrate the art of the possible, especially when all the campuses of the university work together, leverage that collective intelligence and purchasing power to do the right thing. So I'd like to just read out the names of the folks.

First, at the president's office, Neha Ajgaonkar, John Chayrigues, Mike Durkin, John Healey, Chuck Kotecki, Allie Lepper, Bill Smith. But we also have our colleagues from the campuses, as well. A few of them that are here-- Cathy Terry from Amherst, Steve Hall from Lowell, Jim Milesky from Amherst. I hope you can all join me in congratulating this terrific systemwide effort.

[APPLAUSE]

Yep. They're coming up. They're coming up.

Move over.

[LAUGHTER]

Our next presenter is Katherine White, the director of merchant services and unclaimed property in the treasury.

[APPLAUSE]

I was hoping by going last it was going to be only one minute up here. So we'll see how we can do. So I'm pleased to present the Commonwealth of Mass Individual Performance Award to Kathy Robinson. Kathy's been with the university since May 2011. And prior to that was a temporary employee through Temp Right.

Currently, Kathy is a treasury analyst in the treasury department, focusing on providing care and expertise with the abandoned property process, as well as merchant services operations. Over the past year and during the pandemic, Kathy took on additional responsibilities to assist the treasury team with staffing transitions within payment operations.

Kathy provided guidance, training, and knowledge of internal procedures related to payment operations to help resolve any payment processing issues while also training new payment operations staff on various procedures. In addition, since Kathy had recently joined the merchant services team, she continued to train and expand her knowledge of merchant service operations, all while all while continuing to manage and maintain the abandoned property process.

This would be impressive in the best of times, but Kathy accomplished this during the pandemic through many Zoom meetings, while working a hybrid remote schedule. Kathy's flexibility and show of teamwork during the many staffing challenges as well as the unusual and unprecedented times not only provided our Epay and Paymo customers with excellent customer service, but also provided new payment operations' staff with the support and a foundation to further build from.

I applaud Kathy's willingness to roll up her sleeves and do whatever is necessary to get the job done. And I'm grateful for the opportunity to share my appreciation of her efforts with you today-- Kathy. [APPLAUSE]

Once again, our next presenter is Michael Milligan, Chief Information Officer.

Good morning again. And thank you for allowing me to present and shine another light on yet another outstanding group within the president's office. I'd like to start by noting this project was a strong collaboration between Boston, Dartmouth, Lowell, and the whole president's office.

I don't know of a department within our president's office that didn't have a strong role at one time or another within this Slate project. And I'm thankful for all of you that helped make it a success. Furthermore, this team was recognized-- this, what you'll see today, is a team that's probably a quarter of the whole entire team that worked on this from start to finish-- from Boston, Dartmouth, Lowell, and the president's office.

I'm pleased and proud that Dave Gingerella, the CFO from Dartmouth, was the nominator. And we are just extremely excited that we can also celebrate that yesterday was our official last executive steering committee around Slate and that the project's over.

[APPLAUSE]

Slate is a modern, next-generation recruiting and application platform that takes the place of a system that was somewhat old, long in the tooth, and needed to be moved out. I'm excited, because we are now able to provide our recruitment and admission efforts to the newer students and the kids within the commonwealth an opportunity to really use a great platform.

It helps our campuses remain competitive in the higher education marketplace. It provides attractive applicant self-service experience, which is a lot different from our former platforms. It supports our overall enrollment.

It drives real-time data to help campuses recruit. Within days and hours they can change their recruitment efforts in order to get and home in on different students. And most importantly, in my mind, it provides campus differentiation while converging on one shared service. And I'm incredibly proud of that in many, many ways.

In all, Slate has already increased overall applicant level at Boston, Dartmouth, and Lowell in the short time that it has been enabled. And as I noted yesterday, I'm extremely excited that it was our last steering committee.

But even more, I was on the campus of UMass Lowell last week, and was talking to the vise chancellor of enrollment at that time. And it had been a while since I had been on a campus full of students and possible or recruitment. And Carrie Johnson was outstanding. She made it clear to me in the simplest terms-- this platform makes it cool to go in and apply at Boston, Dartmouth, and Lowell again.

And I thought that was really the neat part that brought it home for me. So for all of you, again, there were so many people that touched this program-- my thanks to everyone. Today we're recognizing Alison Bamforth, Robert Jacob, Jules Lipke, Susan McHugh, David Nero, Wendy Rothenbach, Brad Smith, Scott Szajina, and Pam Theodore. Thank you so much.

[APPLAUSE]

Thank you.

Thanks a lot.

Congratulations to all of you. We're now at the point of the program where we recognize our employees who have 25 years of service or more, including our new inductee into the 25-year-plus club. And to acknowledge and welcome the newest member, I'd like to introduce our General Counsel, Gerry Leone.

[APPLAUSE]

--and we'll call everybody up. --for a picture.

OK.

John, how do we get this one on? There we go. That good?

Yep.

So first thing, good morning, everybody. First thing I want to do, and you can't underestimate this-- John, I want to thank you and your entire team because from the Welcome Back Team and all the effort you put into that and this event, it's so much time, so much effort, but most importantly-- just sincere thoughtfulness. So thank you.

And I always say, you don't need recognition, but it's awful nice to have, especially when you're in a big organization like this with so many wonderful people that do so many terrific things on a day-to-day basis. It's just nice. So thanks again, John. Thank you, Carol.

The other thing I want to underscore is the importance of recognition like this-- this honor. I spent over two decades in county, state, federal public service. And I'll tell you, I am absolutely convinced the backbone of huge organizations and big organizations are those people who are the career people-- the people who spent the vast majority of their personal and professional lives working for one team.

And they're the backbone. And that's what we honor with the 25-plus recognition award. And that's what we honor today. And if you look at that list, Sue Kelly is on the list. I don't know where I'd be, day in, day out, without Sue Kelly.

Another person on the list is Peter Michelson. And Peter's retiring this year and I don't know how many you knew that but you don't replace people like that. You just move on and do the best you can.

Now today's honoree, I'm very grateful and thankful to say, isn't going anywhere. He has spent a long time as the principle senior supervisor managing lawyer for the general counsel's office on our Amherst campus. That's a huge job. It's the flagship and we absolutely rely-- I absolutely rely-- on Brian Burke.

He is a terrific, wonderfully talented colleague. He is an excellent lawyer. And, most importantly, he's just an absolutely terrific family man and friend. And so it's with great pleasure that I just say a few words and tell Brian to come on up and receive all the recognition that you deserve-- Brian.

[APPLAUSE]

After the picture, they're going to stay. OK, just stay put. We're going to invite the other employees with 25 plus years of service to come up to join us for the picture. So whoever is here-- Z. Barrett, Joann Conley, Olmedo Gomez, Gayle Johnson, Jim Julian, Sue Kelly, Julie Kenny, Peter Michelson, Kathy O'Neil, Bill Smith, and Diane Tkachuk.

[APPLAUSE]

Welcome every one of you.

Congratulations.

Jerry, thank you. Brian, thank you for your service, and to everybody else in the 25-year-plus club. I wanted to take a moment, and I appreciate Jerry's kind words about the people who put on the event. I'm going to ask the following people to stand because they're the people who did all of the work to make this event happen.

So I don't want to take any credit because to the extent I attempted to have input into the process, they largely ignored me. So the credit is really due to them. So I'm going to ask them to stand and then if we could give them a collective round of applause-- Jacquie Kitler, Cheryl Millett, Jillian Warren, Katie Temple, Carol Dugard, Amy Thompson, John Dawson, Kelly Weeks, Kelly Fucci, and Lindsey Bond. Thank you, all, very much.

[APPLAUSE]

And I just wanted to say a few more words, sorry, before I turn it over to my boss, Lisa Calise, the senior vice president of administration and finance. Carol Dugard, just gave me the two-minute warning. I'm your supervisor.

[LAUGHTER]

Amy Thompson shared a story that just, I said, well doesn't that say it all? Sometimes those stories come out of nowhere, and they're so poignant. I'm always so moved by the ubiquitous of the university in the lives of so many people. My sister graduated-- Microbiology 1983. My brother, School of Business, 1984, and myself, Communications, all from Amherst in 1986.

But as all of us know who work here, probably so many times when you share what you do for work, you hear these heartfelt stories of people about their relationship to the university system.

So with that, I want you to look at the flowers on your table because Amy Thompson placed the flower order with a successful florist in this immediate area. And Amy was placing the whole order. And the woman was taking the whole order.

And when she was done, the woman said, I've just got to say something. And Amy said, go ahead. And she said, I'm a graduate of UMass Amherst Stockbridge school of Agriculture, and my business is going great. And I'm the finalist in the world-wide championship for floral arrangements.

[LAUGHTER]

And I thought, well doesn't that say it all, right? So wherever you go, whoever you meet, there is always some connection back to the University of Massachusetts, which I think is so special. Also very special people is my boss, Senior Vice President for Administration and Finance, Lisa Calisi, who I'm going to introduce for closing remarks. Thank you.

Who is vertically challenged. So for those of you that have a copy of the program, you'll notice that John wasn't on the tail end of the agenda. So he inserted himself. But we'll deal with that later. So I am so proud to be standing in front of all of you. I'm just going to leave you with two really simple takeaways.

The first is, wow, right? Wow! What a fantastic celebration of the work that all of you do. And there's so much teamwork across different sections of the president's office and then beyond to the campuses. So if you take anything away from this morning, walk around and say, wow-- we do some awesome work together in the president's office.

And then the second sentiment I want to leave you with, is take time today to reflect on the work and the contribution you make day in and day out to the enormous, awesome organization that we work for. And I say this, and my direction to all of you, is do not let anyone-- any of your supervisors today, that includes me, to my team-- distract you from taking the time today to reflect on the contributions you make.

We don't do it enough. We're all on our treadmills running. I create that treadmill, just ask John. I know myself well enough to know I create a treadmill. But today, take the time to reflect. Reflect with your colleagues. Reflect by yourself. I'd say take a walk, but the weather isn't that nice.

Just take the time to reflect all you do. So a big, huge thank you from me, from the entire senior team, for your dedication to what you do. And some of what you do, I appreciate, goes unnoticed. But I certainly want to say thank you. So thank you everyone. Thank you to my team for throwing an incredible in-person event. And we will do this again soon. So thank you very much. [APPLAUSE]