Nominations:

• I nominate Tammy under core values 1, 2 and 4.
  1. We are inclusive and embrace our diversity - outside of the University Tammy volunteers, working with looked-after children. Care-experienced students are known to be at greater risk of disengaging and/or withdrawing and from her wider experience, Tammy is an champion for these students. She recently made our team aware of training around supporting our care-experienced and estranged students and this will improve our team's awareness and response to such issues.
  2. We make a positive difference. Tammy makes a positive difference to all students and staff she liaises with, thanks to her responsive, friendly and professional manner. She regularly goes beyond her grade remit in order to help other members of the team and she brings sunshine to our team - even through zoom. An example I can give is the assessment tracking spreadsheet that Tammy set up to coordinate the transfer of work to markers and moderators. She created this, demoed it to Alistair and presented it at a full staff meeting.
  3. We are a friendly and helpful community. Tammy is the first in the team to volunteer for everything and the first to offer help when others are struggling. She goes above and beyond to meet the needs of students and she is super-efficient with it.
  Tammy is a first class star!

• We are a friendly and helpful community. The coursework hand-in date for my module was on the Thursday before Easter and the university subsequently nominated this as a closure day at relatively short notice. Tammy helped me greatly by offering to work on the closure day to process the coursework hand-in and get the marking across to me. This allowed me to keep to the marking schedule that I had previously planned around my other work commitments. Thank you Tammy - massively appreciated!

Nominations:

• 1, 2, 4 and 5 for helping to improve the way that GTA works. She ensured they were inclusive, made a positive change that helps us all, ensured we would get paid, is very friendly and easy to contact and has learnt a lot about the process in order to make many positive changes!!! 

• I would like to nominate Zoe for the MTD award as she has made such an effort to revolutionise the GTA job system, making the system fairer and giving opportunities to a wide a range of PhD students as possible. This is also the same with the captioning work. Both of these have taken a lot of her time and effort, and makes the system much more inclusive than it was before. Zoe always goes the extra mile to sort out our problems and always listens intently to our issues and concerns (which are always promptly dealt with). She has made a really positive difference to the experience of many students. Zoe is always keen to learn how she can help us and will always get stuck in. Zoe is always friendly and treats us with respect and I think she deserves recognition for all she does for the PhD community.

• Zoe has gone above and beyond in making sure PhD voices are heard and for helping drive fairer treatment of graduate teaching assistants - in particular bringing in a new application form for GTAs applying for positions (which is much better and fairer than the first come first serve basis which existed before). She has also hosted a session with PhD students to ask for feedback regarding this, and also for hearing about any issues that are still apparent within the GTA system. She's an all-round good egg :)

• Zoe has always gone above and beyond to ensure that PhD students have their voice heard within the Department (core values: 2 & 4). Zoe created a new PhD recruitment system for Graduate Teaching Assistant positions to make sure the process was as fair as possible. This was really well received within the PhD community, and Zoe even offered numerous follow-up sessions, particularly with a focus to gain feedback and views to continually improve the system for us (core value: 5). In general, Zoe is always warm and friendly, and willing to help with any queries that come from the PhD community (core value: 4). She always strives to represent us and our concerns in the best way she can. I hope she realises how much we appreciate her! 

• Zoe has been instrumental in taking actual steps to create a more inclusive community, always in a positive, friendly, and extremely helpful way. She was open to embrace the correct way in which GTAs should be hired to do teaching, and she has been pushing the central annual leave system, partially, to lessen the impact of over surveillance on non-european migrants.

• Zoe organised a session with the PhD reps and students where she addressed the concerns that we had regarding GTA pay and how GTA's are hired. We felt seen and listened to and she made positive changes based on this. This relates to making a positive difference and we are a friendly and helpful community.

• Zoe is the best manager I could ask for. She is so helpful and supportive, pushing me to learn new things.
  1. In her role, and as a person, Zoe embodies 'We are inclusive and embrace our diversity'. She works with a wide range of people and is always so polite, going the extra mile to help, whoever she is working with. Most importantly, she is championing equality and diversity in our shortlisting/recruitment meetings within the Department, therefore not only showing her own inclusivity, but supporting others to develop in this too.
  2. Zoe has absolutely made a positive difference throughout her time in our Department. She has created and implemented several incredibly successful processes, including her outstanding work on inductions, producing a user-friendly, detail-packed Welcome Pack. The recruitment process is another example, as well as her many hours dedicated to improving the GTA process. The GTAs have given her a lot of positive feedback to echo this.
  3. Zoe strives for environmental sustainability, volunteering to take a lead on the Green Impact team. This has increased her workload, but she continues in her dedication, creating events and striving for improvement.
  4. When I think of 'We are a friendly and helpful community', Zoe pops into my head. I couldn't think of a more friendly and helpful person to arguably be the face of the Department, as she is one of the first people to greet new staff with her incredible Welcome Pack and friendly email. If she doesn't know an answer, you absolutely know she will do everything to find out or help you. She is always kind and thinking of others, which is why I think most people in the Department don't just class Zoe as a colleague, but as a genuine friend as well.
  5. Zoe never stops. There is never any downtime for her. If she isn't volunteering for extra work (her work on Green Impact, and some work for the AQA), she is channeling her efforts into improving systems and processes. She is always eager to learn, keeping an eye out for any training session or chance to meet with a colleague elsewhere in the University to pick their brains and bring that back to this Department. She encourages this in others too; her positive, hardworking attitude is infectious.
  Overall, Zoe is absolutely the right candidate for an MTD award; she has made a huge difference to this Department, and to me personally as my line manager. She embodies all of our core values in her personal life as well as at work. I strongly believe her hard work and dedication deserves to be rewarded.

Nominations:

• I would like to nominate Rebecca Sutton for her work towards the Green Impact Award for the laboratories.  Her contribution demonstrates two of the Department's core values, making a positive difference and striving for environmental sustainability.
  Over the past year, Rebecca has gone above and beyond the of expectations of her role, putting a significant amount of time and effort into ensuring the labs meet as many criteria set out by the Green Impact scheme as possible and preparing the applications for the awards.  She has done this in addition to her regular full-time duties, including looking after the research laboratories and running the elemental analysers, and had been motivated by a strong personal commitment to environmental sustainability.
  In order to meet the various Green Impact criteria, Rebecca has been required to compile large amounts of data and evidence in support of the application.  Many criteria have involved putting new systems in place and changing ways of working, such as recycling schemes, encouraging reuse of plastics, changes to fridge and freezer use, reducing energy consumption and communication strategies to raise awareness.
  Last year, Rebecca submitted a successful lab application for the Silver Green Impact Award and has very recently completed an application and audit with the aim of achieving a Gold Award (outcome is pending).  Regardless of the outcome, her efforts have made the labs more sustainable and this reflects positively on the Department, presenting our core values for students and visitors to our Department/Departmental webpages to see.

• I would like to nominate Rebecca for all of her hard work on the Green Impact submission for the labs gold award. This is in line with core values 2 and 3, making a positive difference, and striving for environment sustainability.
  Rebecca took it upon herself to be the driving force behind the labs submission, on top of her packed workload overseeing the research labs and the running of much complex instrumentation. She has spent hours working through all of the admin side to identify the actions needed, and then progressed many of these herself. The process for the labs is particularly complex, with over 50 different areas to look at. As a result of her work, we have a new system for recycling plastic centrifuge tubes about to come in via a link with Biology, more up to date inventories of the contents of fridges and freezers allowing us to track what can be disposed of more effectively, and hopefully a raised awareness of sustainability concerns amongst lab users due to comprehensive and eye-catching signage. These were excellently designed by Matt, and the team have all contributed to completing the tasks to some degree, however Rebecca's efforts have been standouts, and none of this would have happened without her giving us the impetus, and doing the lions share of the job.
  Recently she took great pains to establish exactly which scheme points we can claim to have achieved, and personally wrote and uploaded the vast majority of pieces of evidence needed for the audit. This took place on Thursday and we are keen to hear back the result, but she is fairly confident that we have done enough to achieve a gold award - a task that seemed very daunting only a year ago. As an Environment Building looking to be part of a Sustainability Entity, it seems very apt to reward efforts of this nature, that will hopefully have long lasting impact on the of running the labs, and changing user behaviours for the better, from undergrads right through to staff.

Nominations:

• 2. We make a positive difference and 4. We are a friendly and helpful community.
  Katherine has been amazing at organizing and looking after the recruitment open days, both the undergraduate ones and the postgraduate ones. She has put in a huge amount of effort and time into liaising with central admissions, sorting out staff and attending each one. She has done this quietly and in the background but this is one of the core tasks that keeps our applications in a healthy place. I am always astounded at just how organized she is in getting all these complex tasks to work and in making sure that everyone involved knows just what they have to do. I think this makes a big difference to the department in terms of our applications processes.

Nominations:

• Friendly and always willing to help

Nominations:

• Has made a huge effort in making the course enjoyable even through online teaching, helping to fully engage the students and make it something to look forward to.

• Mark did fantastic work as the department lead for REF, which is not an easy job! His leadership meant the process was very smooth, non-stressful, and fitted with our core values 'we make a positive difference' and 'we are a friendly and helpful community'.

Nominations:

• Claire has contributed massively to my learning at York; consistently teaching great content in an engaging manner, but most of all, Claire is great at creating a friendly and inclusive community, in which I feel that I can really be myself, ask questions without judgement and get the most out of my learning. I really feel that Claire totally embodies the departments core values and I feel privileged to have had the pleasure of being taught by the best!

• Claire Hughes was the best lecturer I had in my 3 years during my undergrad by far, and inspired me to love and take pride in what I do. Truly an astounding person.

Nominations:

• Core values 2 and 4. Ellie marked all the lab reports for the Ecosystem Processes for me. Many thanks Ellie - that was very kind and helpful. This was no trivial task, with many hours of marking! Much appreciated :-)

• I'm nominating Ellie as she has recently stepped in to pick up a significant amount of work at the last minute for other colleagues. She has frequently agreed to take on moderation at the last minute, but most significantly recently stepped-in to mark ~45 lab reports when a colleague was unwell and unable to complete the work. This is a major undertaking. Ellie didn't complain at all about taking on this work despite having a very busy term of teaching herself. Instead she put a significant amount of effort in to understand the nature of the assessment to ensure the marking was fair. This made a very positive difference  to both the students involved and the colleague who was unable to complete the marking as they had 'piece of mind' that the job was being done well. Marking is one of the toughest parts of the job and I think taking on this massive task at the last minute means Ellie deserves recognition through a MTD award.

Nominations:

• Gone above and beyond to help students get the most from the course even through these hard times.

Nominations:

• Very passionate person, tried to the best of his ability to make his module interesting despite restrictions.

Nominations:

• He has been an excellent advisor for me and has gone above and beyond by answering questions during the holidays and pandemic. He always helps and responds to emails quickly and has been a brilliant advisor. I am very glad to have him for my supervisor.

Nominations:

• 1. and 4. [Core values]

• Jess has fully embraced our core values 2 (we make a positive difference) and 4 (we are a friendly and helpful community). On multiple occasions in the past six months she has stepped in to cover for absent colleagues, not only taking over their tasks but also offering support and friendship. At times she took the initiative herself, without even being asked. Jess' acute awareness of colleagues' needs and her willingness to help out makes her a deserving candidate for a Making the Difference Award.

Nominations:

• Brett was successful in organizing the water quality practical taken out on campus and the process, which was difficult, of sending all the NO2 tubes to every student so everyone was included. 

Nominations:

• Debs has absolutely exemplified making a positive difference and being a friendly and helpful member of the academic community when helping me, as a newer lecturer, deliver online versions of the practicals for students. Without Debs' help, I wouldn't have been able to deliver online practicals where the students actually had tubes and yeast and glucose to run experiments in their kitchens at home. I wouldn't have been able to film practicals, to allow the students to understand various steps of the experiments they would ideally be doigng in the lab. And Debs went above and beyond to help Sylvia and myself deliver students data from the actual plant growth experiment they helped to set up in a brief, between-lockdowns face to face practical.
  
  Debs has made such a positive difference to the student experience this Spring term, and has been so friendly and helpful to me in delivering these practicals. Debs has definitely made a difference! 

Nominations:

• I believe that Laura encapsulates all of these values, but I am nominating her particularly for the positive difference she has made to research in the Department since she joined us and for the friendly and helpful way in which she has done this. Laura joined us last summer (I think!) at a time when we were all working away from the building. In fact, I don't think she has been to the Department since her interview. Despite this, she has been integral in supporting research since she started. There are numerous examples, but I will highlight some of the most significant. the first is her massive amount of work towards REF, and particularly in working on the impact case studies. As well as providing admin support and chasing the paperwork, she has spent a significant amount of time actually working on edits for our 3 case studies. Second, she has provided major input into the research strategy. I personally really appreciate all that she has done in this respect. Third, she has done a major amount of work in supporting fellowship applications. Again, this has involved more than just admin support. She has been actively involved in reading applications and suggesting edits, finding contacts etc. We have submitted more applications this year than ever before and I hope we get some positive news from the applications. Finally, for the last few months, Laura has been doing all this on reduced hours, as she is recovering with symptoms of long-covid following a bout of the virus before Christmas. She is always upbeat and positive about everything and I very much hope she receives the MTD award.

Nominations:

• I feel that throughout the module, Dr Stewart made a positive difference to myself by attentively answering direct and broader questions I had about the module. His insight and friendly attitude towards helping me have inspired and flourished my love for the Ocean. I am now pursuing and active career in ocean conservation and hope to learn much more about ocean management in my third year and postgraduate studies. My regards go to Bryce for assisting me with this.

• He is all of the above [Core values] - such a wonderful guy !! 

Nominations:

• I'm nominating Daryl for this award as I think he meets all of our core values and is a great colleague! He is a great advocate for inclusivity and diversity, and environmental sustainability. He's a great source of support for the Departmental efforts to decolonise and diversify the curriculum and champions sustainability in his role as Sustainability Officer. Daryl has also stepped up to take on additional tasks with enthusiasm (even when asked a short notice) such as being the keynote speaker at the Interdisciplinary Workshops Conference, and joining interview panels such as that for our decolonising and diversifying the curriculum internship. In addition to this Daryl is always curious and learning. He leads programmes which draw upon modules from across two Departments (DEG an Archaeology). This brings with it many challenges but Daryl has always done his best to understand perspectives and approaches on both sides. I also know that Daryl has made a really positive difference to students on the Sustainability programmes this year. Student feedback has told us that he has created a learning community, despite online working.

Nominations:

• Samarthia has gone above and beyond to ensure that students are getting the best out of their time at university despite the current situation. She has organised 'social' sessions in her own time so that students can discuss the module of Food, Space, Culture and Society in an informal setting and actually get to meet their course mates. She has definitely gone out of her way to make a friendly and helpful community.

• Samarthia meets all criteria for this nomination she is of course inclusive and embracing of diversity without a doubt, she strives for environmental sustainability through her promotion of this in her work and lectures. Samarthia also makes a positive difference through our group discussions where she listens so what we all have to say and encourages conversation, she also engages and tells us all about Ollie her dog who we all love. Through making a positive difference in the lecture linked discussions Samarthia also shows she is curious and always learning and also friendly and helpful