Ovation for Erin McGregor

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An Ovation for

Erin McGregor

Student worker
Department of Psychology

January 2017

“Erin is a great asset to the Advising Team. We are able to trust her with a great amount of responsibility and she is able to complete not only the tasks but also provide important feedback to us. She is very detail oriented, efficient and helpful to the students that come in to our office. Erin seems more mature than the "average" student. She is able to juggle school, work and other activities and still able to maintain a strong gpa. I believe Erin would be a great selection for the Ovation Award!”

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“Erin has incredible problem solving skills, attention to detail, initiative, and maturity. She began in our office about 2 years ago, shortly after I did. When my co-advisor left in the Spring of 2015, it was only Erin and I working together for a semester. With an advising load of over 900 students and a course of 200, this was no small task. I could not have made it through that semester without Erin’s help and consistency. She was absurdly efficient and able to complete complex tasks with little direction. I would expect a task to take her an hour and she would have it done with thoroughness and accuracy in 15 minutes. It is also possible that she is able to read minds because she would often anticipate how or what I would like something done without me having to tell her. In her efficiency, she quickly moved through her basic tasks. When she asked for more to do, I gave her tasks off of my list of things to do – things typically done by professional staff. I was often hesitant, she was not. I expected I may have to do a fair amount to revise them once she sent them to me. This was not the case. They would typically come back on point or even better than I imagined if I had done them myself. She redesigned our degree plan assignment, she developed a 4-year plan for our new curriculum that is now used for recruitment and in the undergraduate bulletin, she redesigned and edited over 35 handouts to align with university branding, she transitioned all of our course information from Blackboard to Canvas, and she was our primary grader for our course PSYC 100. She was patient and unfazed when I did ask her to make changes or improvements. We often worked together to problem solve, edit, and improve. She has been absolutely outstanding! When I have questions about Blackboard or Canvas, I often ask Erin first. You might notice that I have not yet mentioned her traditional student worker tasks such as welcoming students to our office, keeping copies stocked, preparing campus visit packets, sending and responding to e-mail, and answering the phone – she does those as well. If I could nominate her for an applause award instead of an ovation award, I would. She has essentially functioned as professional staff in our office for the past two years and I cannot overemphasize the way she has improved and added value to the work we do.”