The College of Engineering recognized Elizabeth Mekaru, who is the ISD Associate Director of Academic Programs, and Ted Coutilish, who is the ISD Assistant Director of Strategic Engagement and Communications, with the 2022 Staff Incentive Award.
The award is given to those who consistently demonstrate the College’s vision, mission, and values with a monetary award.
According to the nomination, “Elizabeth’s outstanding leadership, collaborative, and innovation skills allowed her to successfully navigate through a multitude of significant challenges for the department last year. Her calm, thorough, fact-based approach allowed her to consistently work with her team to take a deep dive into complex issues and network to determine the most effective path forward. This involved completely rethinking and re-doing long-established workflows and processes that required in-depth coordination with CoE and other departments.”
While her initiative, bold thinking, leadership, and dedication to excellence helped to transform many academic services, she consistently demonstrated her values for the involvement and well-being of her staff team throughout, and effectively utilized their combined strengths to continue ensuring that ISD students receive the best support possible. Through these and other daily efforts, she continues to truly exemplify the best of CoE values and is well-deserving of this recognition.”
Also according to the nomination, “Shortly after Ted began with ISD and the university in 2021, unexpected staffing challenges necessitated him fully covering all of ISD’s marketing and communications responsibilities for an extended period. His willingness to immediately apply his experience as a communications leader allowed him to jump in and quickly learn about ISD, CoE, the University, and all of the accompanying workflows, processes, and resources. His collegial “can-do” attitude, strong work ethic, and focus on doing the best helped us to maintain a robust, quality presence even while he was still in the initial learning curve. He has subsequently built a strong new team that he challenges to think creatively and innovatively, and is leading them through several major new initiatives for ISD. He also brought his leadership, collegiality, and collaboration strengths together in the formation and support of ISD’s new Alumni Board. As our “most-branded apparel” staff member, he inspires others daily to continually live our work and personal values.”