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Models of Excellence Nominations Due October 23

October 22, 2020

Now that faculty and staff are working in various locations, it’s important to celebrate Penn community achievements together. The University-wide Models of Excellence program gives you an opportunity to acknowledge great staff across Penn’s schools and centers like Kyle Cassidy, Annenberg School for Communication.

Thanks to a nomination by his peers, Cassidy received a 2020 Models of Excellence Award for his achievements in developing educational technology. He applied his creativity and technical skills to a range of communications projects, such as a virtual reality Narcan training he created in partnership with Penn Nursing. But his contributions to Penn education and research didn’t stop there.

In March 2020 physicians at Weill Cornell Medicine, New York Presbyterian Hospital reached out to Cassidy and his colleagues to find ways to share their clinical COVID-19 expertise with doctors and nurses in other regions of the United States. With support from the Annenberg School and Penn Libraries, Cassidy was able to collaborate with a team of doctors in New York. The team went on to develop remote teaching materials to help health care professionals in the Midwest to prepare to treat patients with COVID-19 before the pandemic hit their communities.

This year, you can nominate individual staff members and staff teams for the Models of Excellence Award, Model Supervisor Award, or Pillars of Excellence Award for weekly-paid staff.

In addition to these long-standing awards, you can nominate staff members for a special Sustaining Penn through COVID-19 category. This one-time category was created in recognition of the unprecedented challenges the Penn community faced throughout the pandemic, and the remarkable strength, ingenuity, and supportiveness staff have shown in response to these challenging times.

The 2021 online Call for Nominations booklet provides details about the standards for each category. You can also view the Quick Start Guide to Submitting a Models Nomination to help you navigate the process.

If you have questions about this year’s call for nominations, please contact the Models of Excellence team at models@hr.upenn.edu.