Professional Staff Award for Excellence
The Professional Staff Award for Excellence recognizes a member of the professional staff whose work has promoted Western's strategic plan objectives to advance inclusive success, enhance academic excellence, and/or increase Western's impact in Washington. This may be through one or more of the following: exceptional communication and interpersonal skills; exceptional integrity, professionalism, and job performance that inspires excellence in others; exceptional dedication to encouraging initiative, creativity, and exploration of new ideas through work and interaction with others.
Selection Criteria
Successful nominees exhibit exceptional communication and interpersonal skills; exceptional integrity, professionalism, and job performance that inspires excellence in others; exceptional dedication to encouraging initiative, creativity, and exploration of new ideas through work and interaction with others.
Award/Recognition
Award Adminstration
Nomination Process
Additional Information
2024
Nia Gipson - Multicultural Student Services
Nia Gipson (she/her) is the inaugural coordinator for the Black Student Coalition. Nia attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she earned her B.S. in Agricultural and Consumer Economics. She went on to earn her M.S. in Educational Leadership with a concentration in college student development from Oklahoma State University.
Before joining the Multicultural Student Services team, Gipson began her career at Western in July of 2021, as the resident director of Beta/Gamma, which also included managing Western’s COVID housing. In her short time here, Nia has served as the FSOCC Rep for PSO, led the 2024 MLK Day planning with the Community Consortium for Cultural Recognition, is the current president of the Faculty and Staff of Color Council, and is the chair of the Black History Month planning committee, just to name a few.
Serving as coordinator of the BSC is immensely important to Nia because she is able create community and systems of support for our Black identifying students. Nothing matters to Nia more than making students feel a sense of belonging, so she hopes to continue to create an environment that is more than just a place to learn, but a place that feels like home.
Max Bronsema - Web Communication Technolgies
Max Bronsema has worked at Western for 12 years, including eight years as department director for Web Communication Technologies within the division of University Relations and Marketing. Max works with all aspects of the university to ensure prospective and current students, staff and faculty can find the information they need and share it with their audiences.
Max has exemplified cross-campus collaboration, transcending silos to forge connections and drive change. Under his leadership, Western's web presence has undergone a profound evolution, marked by innovation, inclusivity, and user-centric design. His adept stewardship has led his team and the university through numerous large-scale web initiatives, contributing to the university’s goals of creating a more accessible digital presence. Max’s commitment to fostering an environment of shared responsibility has fostered a culture where collaboration thrives, bringing together diverse voices and perspectives in pursuit of common goals. “I can only do what I do because of the amazing people I get to work with each day,” Max says. “I want to thank all of you for your work that helps move Western forward.”
Gretchen Rumsey-Richardson - Disability Access Center
Gretchen Rumsey-Richardson brings over 18 years of dedicated service to the Disability Access Center (DAC). Beginning her journey as a speech-to-text transcriber in the classroom, Gretchen's passion for accessibility led her to manage accommodations for d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing students and overseeing the Communication Access accommodation program.
With a deepening commitment to inclusivity, Gretchen expanded her role to oversee accommodations for all disability needs, culminating in her recent appointment as assistant director of the DAC. In this capacity, she leads a team of 20 employees, working to foster an environment where they can meet and exceed their professional aspirations.
Gretchen is deeply committed to enhancing disability-inclusive practices and awareness campus-wide. Collaborating closely with campus partners, she champions a vision of shared responsibility for inclusivity, working tirelessly to make WWU more accessible to all disabled students and employees. She eagerly anticipates continuing to support WWU in achieving its accessibility goals.
Past Awardees
3 awardee(s) for this year
2023 Awardees
Brian Davidson - Tutoring Center, Western Libraries
Davidson is the head of Tutoring for Western Libraries, a graduate of Western’s Adult and Higher Education program, and a recent addition to Western’s professional staff. Before coming to Western in January 2022, Davidson spent 14 years with the community college system supporting students with a wide range of identities and experiences through direct service and program development. He served youth who were unhoused or who were transitioning from foster care, and returning adult students retraining to recover economic independence after a layoff or other traumatic event.
At Western, Davidson has been working side-by-side with Assistant Head Anika Watson and the 60-plus student staff to heal and learn from the pandemic and to meet emerging needs of students. Together, they’ve eliminated gatekeeping practices that threaten inclusivity in student employment, implemented a coaching model that encourages empathetic, efficient tutoring experiences, expanded capacity for peer coaching to support increasing needs for study skills and executive functioning, aligned with the Hacherl Research & Writing Studio to provide more consistency to students, and redesigned the Tutoring Center to encourage a range of supportive peer-to-peer connections.
Robert Clark - ATUS Video Services
Manager Robert B. Clark has worked in ATUS Video Services for more than 17 years, consistently bringing integrity, creativity, and professionalism to his productions. During the Covid switchover to online learning, Clark became Western’s “Zoom Czar” and worked long hours with his colleagues to help faculty and students stay connected. After in-person classes resumed, Clark creatively pivoted from producing webinars to managing hybrid events featuring both in-person and remote participants. These new roles were added to his pre-existing menu of services including complex video productions and mentoring students in the media arts.
Clark enjoys and excels at collaborating and partnering with students, faculty and staff across campus in strategic efforts to keep Western educated and engaged. From field recording to live streaming, Clark’s initiative and creativity are impressive. His position has allowed him to work closely with not only all of our academic colleges, but the President’s Office, Board of Trustees, Alumni, Athletics and Associated Students areas as well.
Clark also uses his skills to help connect Western and our community to such nonprofits as KMRE Radio, the local League of Women Voters chapter and the Bellingham City Club. When not working, Clark enjoys traveling by train, taking photos, and working on his model railroad.
Stephanie Norsby - Human Resources
Assistant Director Human Resources Stephanie Norsby has been a source of continuity in during a period of dramatic transition in HR. Her colleagues admire her for her wealth of HR and institutional knowledge, and the tremendous amount of work she accomplishes, all with a factual, positive, solutions-oriented approach. She recently took on the additional role of the HR liaison to Academic Affairs, which supports nearly 75 percent of employees on campus. Norsby meets regularly with college operations managers to solve a wide array of daily and critical issues, such as emergent medical leaves, priority hiring to fill crucial vacancies, and tricky personnel issues.
Colleagues who awarded her the Professional Staff Award for Excellence put it like this: “With the loss of so many HR staff members in 2022, Stephanie took on extra work tasks, including communicating directly with all the colleges in Academic Affairs to help keep the human resource needs met and moving forward. Stephanie has shown incredible dedication and remains positive in all her interactions. She makes sure we feel we are heard. She is caring and is easy to approach, as she welcomes anyone with a big smile always. The professionalism that she has displayed, coupled with her ability to problem-solve our time-sensitive issues, contributes to Western’s mission and values that include pursuing excellence, and displaying integrity, responsibility, and accountability in all our work. She is just an amazing employee for Western, and we are very lucky to have her in HR.”