Vass Bednar became executive director of the Master of Public Policy in Digital Society program in 2020 after consulting during the development of the MPPDS. She has built aspects of the program in real time, including recruiting an exceptional advisory board with representation from the government, not-for-profit and private sectors. She has also excelled at curriculum design and delivery, recruiting, admissions outreach and placement.

Vass developed a strong digital advertising strategy to recruit the first cohort of applicants by maximizing a limited budget across spaces such as podcasts, specialty media and LinkedIn. She authored dozens of op-eds in publications including The Globe and Mail and made regular media appearances with outlets such as CBC News Radio and Newstalk 1010. Vass has built partnerships across campus with an affiliate faculty program and connections with areas including The Forge. Off campus, she has facilitated partnerships that generate student employment with organizations ranging from the Public Policy Forum to the Centre for Digital Rights. She is also developing an innovative “embedded fellows” program with Mitacs.

Vass continues to build her exceptional reputation in policy circles, having served on a strategic advisory committee for the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario; testifying at the Standing Committee on Industry, Science, and Technology and being named to the Province of Ontario’s Workforce Recovery Advisory Committee.

Since 2018, John Colenbrander has been the facilities manager for the Department of Mechanical Engineering. A two-time McMaster graduate, John has revitalized the labs he oversees – funded largely through his own efforts. He has also made significant contributions to the capstone course that involves students designing and building novel mechanical and mechatronic devices. By engaging the technical staff earlier in the projects, John and his team are able to support student progress as the students are realizing their designs.

John’s work has been exceptional during the pandemic. He quickly developed virtual labs that provided a complete lab experience for students. He also volunteered his experience to design, develop and build mask- and material-testing devices to help with the University’s research related to COVID-19 spread and prevention. This work included a particle filtration testing apparatus, biological filtration efficiency apparatus and mask pressure drop and mechanical testing equipment.

John is a key member of department’s Space and Health & Safety committees, where he provides technical assessments of risks and potential mitigating measures. He has volunteered with the McMaster Formula Electric Car team, where he provided advice and manufactured mechanical parts for the team car. He has also volunteered as a judge in university-wide robotics competitions.

Nancy Devlin recently assumed a new title as managing director of education enterprise for the Department of Family Medicine where she plays a leadership role in – among several priorities – supporting research, recruiting residents and connecting a geographically distributed learning network. Some of her most notable contributions include designing a new budget framework to guide equitable resource allocation, supporting eLearning pathways, forging new collaborative processes with research and patient-care domains and implementing new leadership roles for activities such as simulation learning.

Nancy spearheads the department’s collaborations with educational, family medicine and/or municipal stakeholders across multiple communities and is also a leader with the Family Medicine National Educational Administrator group where she has served five years on the executive, including two years as president. During the pandemic, Nancy led the process of converting to virtual recruitment for residents, an effort that included creating digital content, adapting processes and training staff. The results included nearly 700 well-coordinated, four-station interviews involving 48 interviewers. Nancy also facilitates volunteer initiatives in support of community needs through food and clothing drives or fundraising – efforts in which she includes staff at all of the department’s geographic locations. One specific example involved Nancy encouraging the various sites to identify opportunities for giving in each community and incorporating those causes into the department’s list for holiday giving.

A McMaster graduate, Pamela Elmhirst has worked at the University since 2009, spending the majority of that time in human resources for the Faculty of Health Sciences. In 2019, she joined the Office of Faculty Affairs as senior manager, establishing the team as a foundational support unit for the Faculty. As senior manager, she has developed the Office’s strategic plan, re-designed the onboarding process for new senior leadership, and played a lead role in the development and execution of the Faculty’s diversity and climate survey. She has also played key roles in developing the Faculty’s Equity Advocacy and Allyship Program and the EDI and Indigenous Health Speaker Series.

Pam planned and executed annual senior leadership retreats and founded communities of practice for members of the Faculty Executive. She developed a COVID-19 Faculty Wellness Hub and launched the Faculty Wellness Working Group. Pam served as advisor to the executive director of the Michael G. DeGroote Initiative for Innovation in Healthcare and was a key member of the design team for the Health Leadership Academy and the Emerging Health Leaders Program. She is currently part of a team developed an advanced academic leadership program.

Pam co-chairs the Health Sciences Joint Health and Safety Committee and has served on working groups including the McMaster Retention and Promotion Implementation Team, the Volunteer Engagement and Wellness Committee, the McMaster Age-Friendly University Committee and the Healthy Workplace Committee.  Pam is also an active Employment Equity Facilitator, supporting the advancement of inclusive excellence through faculty recruitment.

Joanne Kehoe is the lead educational developer for digital pedagogy in the Paul R. MacPherson Institute for Leadership, Innovation and Excellence in Teaching and Learning. Since the start of the pandemic, she has led the institute’s efforts to support instructors in the transition to remote and online teaching. She spearheaded the recruitment and integration of an expanded team of online learning specialists and educational developers and led the development of core resources in online and blended learning to allow McMaster to pivot to the remote environment. Joanne helped develop the University’s digital learning strategy and McMaster’s submission to the provincial Virtual Learning Strategy – a $2.5 million application notable for its consultation, innovation and quality.

Joanne founded and co-chairs McMaster’s Open Education Resources Committee, and in the past year, Joanne advocated for, developed and implemented a granting program to support instructors in developing open educational resources. As project lead and co-chair of the Instructional Design Interest Group of Ontario, Joanne is a provincially recognized leader in digital pedagogies, online learning and open education.

Joanne has been part of the Healthy Workplace committee, the Board/Senate Hearing Panel for Sexual Harassment/Anti-Discrimination and the McMaster Children’s Party committee.

Courtney Pitt is an instructional assistant in the Faculty of Health Science’s undergraduate anatomy and physiology (A&P) course. Courtney began her McMaster career in 2014 as a lab assistant before earning promotions in 2016 and then again in 2018 to her current position. Courtney’s command of technology and data is remarkable. The author of the bespoke manual for undergraduate TAs, she spearheaded the pandemic-imposed switch to virtual learning for the program, including the coordinated use of SharePoint, OneNote and Teams. Courtney also produced 12 case studies for midwifery students to highlight specialized anatomy and physiology concepts.

Courtney leveraged her knowledge of statistics to create a sophisticated tool for analysing multiple-choice and bellringer test questions. The result is a process that uses statistical data to validate the quality of test questions and provides an opportunity for instructors to improve the questions. For bellringer questions – a staple of anatomical education – Courtney was involved with a potentially revolutionary research project using AI in grading. Courtney also advocated for an innovative and more insightful approach to student feedback. This approach became the basis for immediate course improvements and for a scientific paper regarding the impact of the pandemic on the A&P course. During the pandemic, Courtney led the creation of entirely new online laboratory exercises, quickly becoming an expert in the software needed to make the transition.

Sally Stafford is the communications and lab manager for the McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind (MIMM) LIVELab. A Mac alumna, she was previously central coordinator for the Kindergarten Vision Screening Program and a research assistant in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour. With MIMM, Sally leads outreach, mentors research assistants and orchestrates the concert series. She created the LIVELab Ambassador program for undergraduate student volunteers and is also a key member of the research team that oversees, for example, an innovative project involving the Hamilton Philharmonic and two hearing aid companies. Sally arranges the Girls in Science Day tours and has volunteered to support events staged by student clubs including MacBeats and Artists at McMaster.

When the pandemic disrupted LIVELab’s regular activities, Sally excelled in finding new ways to accomplish key goals. She engaged the Mohawk College Broadcasting Program to stream live shows and she spearheaded a grant application to the NSERC PromoScience program to fund outreach initiatives involving local children. When Mac students started volunteering in greater numbers during the pandemic, Sally adapted the LIVELab Ambassador program to a virtual environment, creating opportunities for students to contribute to research and outreach. She also extended LIVELab’s community connections through Science Rendezvous, an initiative that takes science, research and innovation “onto the street” to create online activities for families across Canada.

Rebecca Woodworth started at McMaster in 2000 and has been part of the Department of Biology since 2012. She was promoted to her current position, department administrator, in 2017. Rebecca has played a vital role in managing through changes in the department’s team by training fellow staff and ensuring – during a period when the department had a number of chairs in quick succession – that each department chair has had a smooth transition. In overseeing the department’s financial records, Rebecca discovered issues with the General Ledger system and her insight ultimately accelerated the implementation of the Business Intelligence tool campus wide.

When the pandemic forced a course with more than 2,000 students to become virtual, Rebecca built a team to develop mail-home lab kits and even printed all 2,000 address labels herself. When in-person instruction became possible again, Rebecca devised the laboratory schedule and orchestrated the only in-person lab course at McMaster outside of health sciences in fall 2020. She accomplished similar results as the pandemic wore on – always providing students with experiences that were on the leading edge of what was possible given pandemic restrictions of the time. Rebecca is also well known for organizing Ontario Biology Day, a province-wide student thesis showcase.

One of the pillars of the world’s response to COVID-19 has been an historic vaccination effort. McMaster’s Department of Family Medicine has been at the heart of that strategy in Hamilton and the team of Jill Berridge, Jennifer Frid and Katherine Hale has managed the department’s vaccination program, putting in hundreds of hours of work to ensure that every Hamiltonian who wants the vaccine can get it. Katherine, Jennifer and Jill recruited the necessary professionals, coordinated with external partners like Hamilton Public Health Services and created and managed a vaccination hub at the David Braley Health Sciences Centre.

Adding the vaccine clinic duties to their regular responsibilities, Jennifer, Katherine and Jill designed the clinic to serve not just pandemic-mitigation goals, but also the University’s learning goals. They established a responsive management approach that made them available to more than 100 clinic staff at a moment’s notice. They emphasized trust in the policies, procedures and practices of the newly established clinic to ensure that staff and patients alike had a pathway to expressing and addressing concerns and suggestions. They also created processes to help ensure that vaccines reached underrepresented and marginalized members of the community. Together, the three vaccine clinic leaders displayed innovation in adapting the best-available space at DBHSC into the clinic and then supplementing that main space with pop-up clinics in other locations around the city.

Within two months of the arrival of COVID-19, the McMaster Platelet Immunology Laboratory shifted its work in order to measure anti-COVID antibodies. This created unprecedented amounts of work at a time when no one really understood COVID but many feared the worst. This meant evening and weekend shifts and a meticulous approach to safety as the 12-person lab team measured, for example, antibody levels in older people and in people who were immune compromised following COVID infections.

Over the last two years, the McMaster Platelet Immunology Laboratory team has been involved in developing the tests that identify individuals infected with COVID-19 and determining the long-term immunity against COVID-19 following infection and vaccination. Additionally, the team was instrumental in the study of Vaccine-induced Immune Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia (VITT), writing the widely adopted guidelines on the diagnosis and treatment of the condition and becoming the only testing centre for VITT in Canada. The lab ran thousands of samples to inform the Government of Canada’s COVID-19 vaccination policies, including the optimal timing between doses of the vaccines and the need for vaccine booster shots in long-term care facilities. Despite this great increase in research activity, the lab continued to provide regular testing, reporting and patient care. Two of the lab’s studies were identified by Ontario’s Premier as two of the top five studies funded by the province in the past year.

Rakesh Sahu was a research engineer and adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering before becoming operations director of McMaster’s Centre of Excellence in Protective Equipment and Materials (CEPEM). Launching the centre was a demanding process that saw Rakesh procure equipment, establish processes and procedures and develop partnerships with the more than 40 companies linked to CEPEM. He was quickly able to earn the trust and confidence of the new team as well as the centre’s external partners. Team members have praised his multidisciplinary knowledge, his ability to link academia with the private sector and the clarity and efficiency of his work.

In the midst of this effort – and in the midst of the pandemic – Rakesh was still able to meet an urgent request for help from McMaster’s Global Health Program partners in Uganda where the impact of COVID-19 had reached crisis levels. In response to the request, Rakesh solicited donations of personal protective equipment from Canadian suppliers and fulfilled the administrative requirements for charitable gift receipts in the process. He then facilitated domestic shipping, temporary local storage and finally the complex shipping arrangements which involved detailed, multi-national paperwork and tracking delivery via sea container shipping and truck-based delivery in Africa. Ultimately, the $750,000 delivery of PPE had a significant positive impact on frontline workers in Uganda.

The Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes individuals who have demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to McMaster that is above and beyond what is expected of their position.  Recipients of this award have made a positive impact on the broader community and furthered McMaster’s mission with a significant and sustained contribution of their work.

The awards are open to all full-time or part-time staff from operations, research and ancillary departments or units of McMaster University who have demonstrated a minimum commitment of 15 years of service to the University.

Individual awards are open to all full-time or part-time staff from operations, research and ancillary departments or units of McMaster University who are employed on a continuing basis or for a term or contract of one or more year’s duration. Employees at TMG Band O or higher are not eligible for the awards. 

All members of nominated teams will be celebrated as a group for their contribution to a project on behalf of McMaster University.  It is anticipated that at least seventy-five percent of team members will meet the Individual Awards criteria.  Confirmation of team members is the responsibility of the nominator and must be completed at the time of the nomination submission.

Although individuals or units within a department should be acknowledged and rewarded for their collaborative work toward meeting their goals, the intent of this Awards Program is to recognize those individuals or groups within a team who have made the most significant contributions to a particular project, or project teams spanning multiple departments or sub-departments, where the members have all made outstanding contributions beyond what is normally expected of their positions. We encourage leaders to find alternate avenues for recognizing and rewarding their department for good work on a more regular and ongoing basis.

The Early Achievement Award was created to recognize an employee with less than 5 years of employment at McMaster University who has achieved excellent service beyond that expected for their level of experience in the position they hold.

The Special Achievement Award may be granted to an individual or team who was not selected as an Award recipient but whose exemplary contribution to McMaster deserves to be recognized.