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ITG recognized for leadership and support amidst transition to remote work

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From left to right: Ron Farren, David Lee, Matthew Mitchell, Andrew Donkersgoed, Adis Castillo Lopez, Lyle McLean, Ali Nursal, and Tim Siemens

Western Engineering News | May 13, 2021

Each year the Faculty presents the Engineering Award of Recognition to an individual who has made an exceptional contribution to help further the academic, research and innovation, public service and/or administrative missions of the Faculty.

This year’s Engineering Award of Recognition went to the faculty’s Information Technology Group (ITG). The team consists of eight members — Ron Farren, Adis Castillo Lopez, Andrew Donkersgoed, David Lee, Lyle McLean, Matthew Mitchell, Ali Nursal, and Tim Siemens.

“In the challenging times that 2020 proved to be, the IT Group stepped up and undertook many initiatives that I would describe as innovative, transformative, and essential to supporting our academic and research missions,” said Remington Wickman, Director of Finance at Western Engineering. “The team provided critical IT leadership and support when we needed it most.”

In March 2020, ITG had to quickly switch gears and take on a major leadership role to assist the faculty with the transition to online work, teaching, and learning.

Some of the team’s major projects included process automation with Kuali Build; enabling remote access for all engineering students in support of remote learning;

providing significant effort to quickly enable staff and faculty to work remotely; implementing Chatbot on the ITG homepage to provide help to students, staff, and faculty after hours; and the list goes on.

“The ITG team was surprised and elated to learn that we had been chosen to receive the Engineering Award of Recognition,” said Ron Farren, Associate Director, ITG. “The team has worked diligently over the last number of years to build and foster our relationship within the faculty, and it is great to see that these efforts are working, and that we are having such a positive impact within Engineering. We would like to thank everyone who has helped to make this possible, and we are truly humbled by this honour.”

Western Engineering will honour both the 2019/20 and 2020/21 award recipients at a virtual celebration on June 3, 2021.