Meet 2022 ISD Staff Excellence Award Winner Shonda Adams

Shonda Adams earned this award for “demonstrating above and beyond performance with enthusiasm and positivity” in the areas of customer service, professionalism, teamwork, initiative, and innovation. 

In her role as ISD Admissions and Academic Programs Coordinator, Adams oversees the application processes for the division as well as playing a key role in credit transfer and degree audits. Adams will be celebrating her 10-year ISD work anniversary next month in June. Adams is quick to point to her colleagues for credit.

“I sincerely appreciate the recognition of the volume of work I’ve completed during the past year with my colleagues Elizabeth Mekaru, Kathy Bishar, Ronda Hamilton, James Tobias, Alicia Markey, Matthew Faunce, Amanda Pickering, Betsy Dodge, April Hays, and Robert Norris,” she said. “Together, we have been making efforts to improve and streamline the admission process, I-20 process, transfer credit, and degree audit processes to name a few. I am very grateful to have received this prestigious award for my contributions to these workflow processes, especially during the initial challenging and demanding months during the Graduate Registrar transition period. I want to thank my colleagues for their support and nomination of this award.”

Work Quickly and Efficiently

At ISD, her work includes processing new applications in SiC, MPathways and Perceptive Content, checking residence status, exchanging emails with students, and processing degree audits and transfer credits at the end and beginning of terms. Adams likes the versatility of tasks and helping students with their requests. She gets a lot of satisfaction knowing she’s either resolved an issue or helped to get an issue resolved. 

“My approach is to work as quickly and efficiently as possible,” she said. “Sometimes I’ll get serendipitously inspired on ways to improve my workflow process and my approach to work from a guest faculty speaker. I can best serve ISD students by being an active and holistic employee.”

Streamline Application Process

Moving forward, Adams will continue to look for ways to streamline the application process and make it more direct and transparent for students.  

“I have high hopes for the new application we are currently working on,” she said. “It is my hope to be able to return to having our in-person NCSI lunch events in the near future and sharing various topics centered on sustainability research topics from College of Engineering faculty and students, cross campus sustainability guest speakers, and alumni corporate guest speakers with the North Campus community.”

Congratulations Shonda Adams!