Dear colleagues:

The 2020 Staff Service Awards are like no other that have been celebrated in UCI history. While we cannot be together to honor staff who have reached significant service milestones, your achievements are no less impressive and deserving of our time and attention.

This year we honor UCI’s first-ever 50 year service honoree, Diana Speaker, administrative analyst in the School of Medicine’s pathology department. Fifty years. What an incredible achievement. Diana started with UCI in 1970 at what was then Orange County Medical Center. In 1976, UCI purchased the medical center and renamed it UCI Medical Center. Diana had already been an employee for six years at that point. She eventually made her way to the School of Medicine, working in a variety of capacities, including human resources. When asked why she has stayed with UCI for 50 years, Diana replied, “UCI took care of me when I had a young family and needed understanding, flexibility and work-life balance. I’ll always be grateful for that.” Thank you, Diana, for making UCI your career home for 50 years, and thank you for your multitude of contributions over the past five decades.

I hope that as our 2,093 service honorees reflect on their combined 19,269 hours of service to UCI and the UC system, they can recount stories of their own similar to Diana’s. UCI is a place to build your career, not just do a job.

Today we celebrate six 40 year service honorees – Dianne Bean, Robert Hudack, Janet Mason, Carmen Roode, Linda Michelle Weinberger, and Norma Yokota-Norwood. Four decades – that is impressive. Congratulations to each of you. I know our university is better because of the work you have done here.

We also honor twenty 35 year honorees and fifty-one 30 year honorees. Fifty-seven of our colleagues join our quarter century club, celebrating 25 years of service in 2020. Congratulations to all of you for reaching these significant milestones, and thank you for your service to UCI.

Please take a few minutes to review the list of all our honorees at https://hr.uci.edu/partnership/staff-service/awards-honorees.php.

I’m inspired by reading the names of our honorees because it proves to me that UCI’s staff members are dedicated to this university. My belief in the value of our staff is so strong that I included staff as a vital element of our strategic plan in pillar 4, New Paths to Our Brilliant Future. I am counting on staff to help us forge best practices to power our brilliant future.

As outlined in pillar 4, the goal of leadership at UCI is to bolster and position staff to effectively support our academic mission. This means that we must continue to evaluate gaps in staff support, make it our ongoing mission to develop and implement innovative efficiencies, modernize administrative processes, seek out staff ideas and contributions, commit to developing staff’s professional growth and career progression, and continue to increase staff engagement across the enterprise.

In addition to all of these things, I also continue to commit to creating a culture where every staff member is valued for not only their professional contributions, but their human, personal contributions. It is our diversity that will inspire innovative ideas and lead us boldly toward our brilliant future. As a university, we will work toward the day when every staff member genuinely embraces what I know to be true – that our staff at UCI are valued, appreciated, and celebrated.

Today, we celebrate our 2020 service honorees from afar, but with no less pride and enthusiasm than if we were together at the Bren. Thank you – all of you – for your contributions to this great institution.

Fiat lux,

Chancellor Howard Gillman