Staff Recognition and Achievements

Awards of Excellence

Rodriguez and Jones receive OIT Awards for Excellence

The Office of Information Technology (OIT) presented two staff members with the annual Awards for Excellence at a ceremony on April 17.

Surrounded by colleagues in a sunlit room in Talley Student Union, April Jones and Bill Rodriguez received the highest honor given to non-faculty employees at NC State. Jones is a human resources (HR) coordinator in OIT Business Services, and Rodriguez is a cybersecurity operations engineer for OIT Security and Compliance.

Both were nominated in the human relations category, which recognizes staff for their outstanding contributions toward enhancing the quality or morale of the workplace or toward enhancing the public image of a department or division, the university or state government.

Jones, SHRA Winner

Described in her nomination as an “HR wizard,” Jones serves as OIT’s primary contact for all HR activity, including leave, benefits, recruitment, separations, salary and position actions, and timekeeping. She has created a valuable toolkit to guide managers through personnel changes and connects with staff at every level to help solve problems.

Leading with positivity, Jones has worked to improve morale and foster a culture of recognition for OIT’s 300 employees, organizing social events like the annual holiday luncheon and coordinating the Awards for Excellence for many years.

“There is no task too big or too small for April,” Karen Horne, senior director of Business Services, said in the nomination letter. She is always willing to jump in and help to meet deadlines and keep operations running smoothly.

Rodriguez, EPS Winner

As a cybersecurity operations engineer and co-chair of the Cybersecurity Awareness Team, Rodriguez has one foot in the technical side and the other in the human side of cybersecurity. He works with the Cybersecurity Operations team to safeguard the university’s systems and data while educating the campus community about cybersecurity.

Whether he’s chatting one-on-one at a tabling event, speaking to new students and their parents at orientation, or training employees on artificial intelligence, Rodriguez is always looking for ways to engage with the community. He has also spearheaded a pilot of simulation tools to help users identify phishing emails and meticulously catalogs real-world phishing campaigns to strengthen OIT’s training materials.

“Bill has been instrumental in mitigating the impact of phishing campaigns targeting our user community,” said Andy Kotynski, director of Cybersecurity Operations, in the nomination letter.

Pride of the Wolfpack Awards

The Pride of the Wolfpack award honors staff members who make significant contributions to improving the services, systems and experiences of OIT as well as the university community. The 2024-25 Pride of the Wolfpack Award winners were:

Stephen Parker
Mike Valentine
Bill Jenniches
Chelsea Sutton
William Stevenson
Rob Blanke
Tony Copeland
Eric Campbell
Matt Hawkins

T.O.A.S.T. Awards

The 2024-2025 recipients for the Totally Outstanding Attitude, Service and Talent Award were:

Trevor Albrecht
Myk Aleshchanov
Andrew Behnke
Mardecia Bell
Bennett Best
Brandon Bouché
Sherwood Bryan
Sarah Clements
Jonathan Cranford
William Cummings
LaToya Darden
Utkarsh Dave
Nik Davlantis
Chris Deaton
Lloyd Degnan
Gabbi Ferguson
Mark Harben
Jordan Hargis
Marie Hotaling
Brooklyn Marion
Hal Meeks
Todd Miller
Laverne Petit-Frere
Lee Pipkin
Bill Rodriguez
Walker Rogers
Alyssa Scinta
Chris Shearer
Arianna Story
Chelsea Sutton
Elizabeth Tran
Kim Vassiliadis
Carl Walton
Brennan Watson
Alexandra Weld
Early Yu

IT Community Awards

During the Annual NC State IT Community Awards ceremony held on Feb. 13, several OIT employees were recognized for making a significant collaborative impact at NC State in the following categories:

Team Player Award

The Team Player Award recognizes a person who has taken the initiative to foster collaboration, communication and cooperation with units or individuals outside their department. This individual has performed at a level above and beyond in bringing the campus community together, while also furthering the department’s or university’s goals and mission while upholding its values. This award was presented to Gabbi Ferguson of Outreach, Communications and Consulting.

Rising Star Award

The Rising Star Award recognizes a new employee (employed three years or less in an IT-related role at the university) who has made significant contributions to their area or to the university community in a collaborative way. This individual has innovative ideas, has made significant contributions, and has volunteered to assist when and where needed. This individual will have a demonstrated record of improvement, excellent customer service, and cooperation, and be a self-starter with a take-charge attitude. This award was presented to Chris Shearer of Outreach, Communications and Consulting.

Service Awards

This fiscal year, NC State recognized 50 employees in OIT who reached five-year milestones in university service:

30 Years of Service

Deborah Booth
Bill Coker
Wade Cornett
Scott Dean
Kevin McDonald
Cheri Pipkin
Gail Proper

25 Years of Service

Iris Bonapart
Yessenia Mendoza-Tate
Aaron Peeler

20 Years of Service

Peyton Armstrong
William Jenniches
Kristina Kelly
Gary Li
Christopher Radabaugh
Eric Sills

15 Years of Service

Derek Ballard
Jeff Boone
Amy Coggins
Alvin Gilmore
Mark Harben
Marc Hoit
Chen Liu
Brittany Mastrangelo
Jason Proctor
Rebecca Sitton
David Wagner
Brennan Watson

10 Years of Service

Damon Armour
Kristopher Boone
Steven Burkett
David Conn
Nik Davlantis
Robert Eisele
Jamie Hufnagel

5 Years of Service

Andrew Behnke
Sheldon Brickhouse
Julian Denton
Brandon Faircloth
Gabbi Ferguson
Jacob Fosso Tande
Marshall Grady
Joseph Hurst
Donatus Manget
Jenn McGrath
Srikanth Mergu
Michael Pastva
Barney Price
Charles Trajcik
Jeff Williams

Retirements

OIT employees who retired during the 2024-25 fiscal year included:

Gary Li
Rhonda Greene
Tom Reynolds
Tom Karches
Carol Hill
Dan Grigg
Michelle Johnson
Anthony Santucci
Barbara Runyan
David FeFoor
Bill Coker
Karen Horne

Major New Appointments

Julie Swann was appointed as Interim Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research Computing and Data.
- She also is a Department Head in her area of Industrial and Systems Engineering.)
Sarah Clements assumed the role of OIT Knowledge Manager
Mike McComas is the new Director for Vendor Risk and License Management.

Professional Activities

During this fiscal year, many OIT employees earned certifications and awards, published articles, presented at local and national conferences, and served in various capacities, sharing their knowledge and expertise.

Justin Bryant obtained GCIH and CISSP certifications.
Martin Kasprzak obtained ITIL4 and KCS Fundamentals certifications.
Joseph Hurst obtained HDI Support Center Manager certification.
Dustin Maurice obtained CTS certification.
Jennifer Domnick presented at EDUCAUSE 2024 and Cybersecurity Symposium 2025.
Nik Davlanis, Jennifer Dominick, Fernanda D’Amorim, Anthony Santucci and Sarah Clements presented at NC State IT Community Day.
Application Infrastructure Services staff members worked 29 weekends during FY25 on scheduled maintenance activities related to enterprise systems.
Several OIT staff volunteered at work shifts via Accenture’s One Hour of Code event at various Wake County middle schools to introduce young students to application development.
Elizabeth Cole-Walker and Bill Rodriguez provided support for the NC State Student ISSA Chapter.
Security and Compliance members led and supported key outreach efforts, including planning for the fourth annual NC Cybersecurity Symposium (Mardecia Bell, Damon Armour, Elizabeth Cole-Walker), promoting tech careers via K–12 and university engagement (Elizabeth), and representing S&C at the 2024 Labman conference (Elizabeth Cole-Walker and Bill Rodriguez) — marking the first security presentations at the event.
For the eighth consecutive year, Andrew Kotynski was a volunteer member of the Technical Advisory Board for the Town of Wake Forest.
Elizabeth Cole-Walker was appointed for a 3-year term to the Provost Council on the Status of Women and served in a lead role on the Sisterhood Dinner committee with the charity silent auction raising $4,000.
Mardecia Bell, Gwen Hazlehurst, Elizabeth Cole-Walker, and Jennifer Domnick served on the leadership team for the Women in Information Technology (WIT) special interest group that provides a welcoming forum for men and women to learn, grow professionally, and promote a unified university IT workplace.
Elizabeth Cole-Walker participated in the Staff Women’s Network, helped with women’s professional development and provided service projects across campus to better the NC State community.
Mardecia Bell and Elizabeth Cole-Walker participated with the BRIDGES Academic Leadership NC State alumni group.
Elizabeth Cole-Walker provided training for students, faculty, and staff entitled, Protect Our Pack, “Practical Data Security” via Reporter.
Membership continues in the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC), EDUCAUSE Higher Ed Information Security Council (HEISC), and Research and Education Networks Information Sharing and Analysis Center (REN-ISAC).
Members of professional organizations: Information Systems Audit and Control Association (Bell, Armour, Lewis, Booth and Cole-Walker); FBI’s InfraGard (Bell, Armour, Cole-Walker and Kotynski); Information Systems Security Association (ISSA) (Bell, Armour, Booth, Kotynski and Cole-Walker, who is also an appointed member of the ISSA Career Services Board); International Systems Security Certification Consortium (Armour, Booth, Lewis, Raynor and Kotynski); Society for Technical Communication and College News Association of the Carolinas (Bidgood).
Mardecia Bell served as a member of the UNC Information Security Council, the NC Technology Association CISO Roundtable and the CISO Society.
Mardecia Bell serves as co-chair of the AI Advisory Group and leader for the AI in Business Operations subgroup.
Bill Coker and Bill Rodriguez were nominees for the OIT Awards for Excellence. Bill Rodriguez was one of two OIT winners.
Security and Compliance members actively contribute to and participate in Educause Communities of Interest, including Privacy, Regulated Research, and Artificial Intelligence.
Elizabeth Cole-Walker continued as a volunteer of Triangle InfoSeCon and served on the Career Services Team.
Ryan Gallagher renewed his PCI DSS Internal Security Assessor certification.
The Security Operations Team (SOC), competed in the UNC System-wide Splunk-sponsored “Boss of the SOC” capture the flag competition and came in 3rd place, our first attempt at this competition.
Sarah Clements obtained ITIL Foundations and KCS certifications.
Sarah Clements presented during the IT Community Event on Knowledge Best Practices.
Gabbi Ferguson presented on the Cyber Bowl during the 2024 UNC CAUSE Conference.
Gabbi Ferguson presented during EDUCAUSE online about the benefits of branding for IT success.
Gabbi Ferguson represented OIT during a luncheon with John O’Brien, president and CEO of EDUCAUSE.
Jill Phipps served on the UNC Staff Assembly (Executive Board).
Pat Gaddy continued to represent NC State on the UNC Staff Assembly.