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Awards

Director’s Achievement & Great Gator

The Director’s Achievement Award is given to associates or teams who contribute to achieving a data point toward the Lastinger Center’s Objectives & Key Results (OKRs).

The Great Gator Award is passed along bi-annually from one associate to another in recognition of a colleague’s hard work.

Director’s Achievement Award

Quarter Ending – May 2024

The eight Organizational Health and Structure Steering Committee members took on the responsibility of caring for and representing the perspectives of Lastinger Center associates broadly. With a remarkable level of care and comprehensiveness, they reviewed existing data from the Center the data gathered by Conversant. They also gathered new data through experiences, conversations, and surveys. They supported the overall review process and participated in joint sessions with the executive team to review findings as well as independent sessions to develop recommendations. Through the themes and recommendations shared, they facilitated associates’ voices being heard and influenced the decision-making process. They are to be commended for the way in which they exhibited the core values of the Lastinger Center and helped to inform the actions taken to improve Organizational Health and Structure moving forward.

The steering committee was comprised of people working in a wide range of roles throughout the center:

  • Tim Mosunich, Committee Chair – Senior Technology Coordinator
  • Melissa Brown – Family Engagement & User Feedback Product Development Coordinator 
  • Chris Engledowl – Mathematics Content Development & Implementation Coordinator
  • Rosie John-Baptiste – Literacy Content Specialist
  • Ginno Kelley – Assistant Director of Learning Design
  • Hema Patel – Senior Finance Coordinator
  • Stephanie Snidarich – Research Coordinator
  • Tiffany Taylor Jones – Early Learning Content & Implementation Manager

 

 

Our 2024 Director’s Achievement Awards Recipients:

January 2024

Stephanie Cugini takes initiative and sees projects through to completion. By establishing  a strong relationship between the Lastinger Center and the UF Foundation, initiating systematic processes for cultivating new sponsors, managing relationships with existing donors and promoting renewals, Stephanie has helped the Lastinger Center achieve 30% of our $25M capital campaign goal to date. Stephanie’s recent efforts contributed to a renewal of the James Patterson gift for literacy and to a Naples Education Foundation award for math.

Jessica Richards has created a systematic process for our client journey, established standard operating procedures for Lastinger Center literacy partnerships and initiated a conference strategy. These efforts to develop and maintain partnerships with school districts have led to approximately $2.5M in literacy contracts in the first half of this year. Jessica has out-performed established goals and has contributed to the generation of internal funding, allowing us to allocate resources for reinvestment in product development and enhancement

Our 2023 Director’s Achievement Awards Recipients:

October 2023

Matt GriffinDeborah HaboraJennifer Reed, and Diane Evans have demonstrated exceptional commitment and efficiency in handling a substantial volume of expenditures for the Lastinger Center. As part of the newly established Processing Team, they have created a higher level of personalized support to Lastinger Center staff, prepared the Center for the UF GO transition, and remained adaptable and agile. Over the past quarter, they have processed over 330 travel requests and reports, over 400 purchase orders and over 800 vouchers. Additionally, their efforts have led to a significant reduction in the reimbursement timeline for a vast majority of associates.

Pam ChalfantAlex PrinsteinMaggie GardnerAna ValdezAna PascualLiza Leonard and Rachel Chastain-Gross lead the Lastinger Center’s coaching programs. Their work provides high-quality coaching professional learning to teachers, coaches and administrators, and supports even greater student learning outcomes. The team consistently delivers high quality professional learning experiences as evidenced by a perfect Net Promoter Score (100) from participants in coaching programs.

June 2023

Bryn Humphrey and Amanda Wilson led an incredible team effort to develop and implement the Literacy Micro-Credentials. In less than six months, they supported the program launch to over 6,000 participants. Within the first six months of the program, 1,156 instructional personnel successfully earned mastery. Participants saw an average 71% pretest/posttest knowledge gain and gave the micro-credentials a Net Promoter Score of 80. In addition to modeling leadership with this center-wide project, Bryn and Amanda also represented the Lastinger Center to the Florida Department of Education.

March 2023

Lucianna Grasso, Tammy Perez, Deza Free, Dulcy Dillinger, and Emily Moya led the configuration of the Flamingo student information system, Genius, to prepare it for enrollment of new learners and transcript and certificate access for historic learners. They’ve collaborated with technology and data teams to accommodate the needs of 55,000 learners and made sure it is ready for scale in the future so the Center can increase its impact and students and educators.

Our 2022 Director’s Achievement Awards Recipients:

December 2022

Tim Mosunich and Fernando Franco Crespo have provided leadership to enhance the Flamingo Learning user experience. They have implemented an approach to “Bug Bashing” that ensures that new coursework materials are free of bugs and glitches, and they support users throughout their coursework to improve retention and mastery. The results of their work are evidenced in top-of-class Net Promoter Scores, which ranged from 72 in literacy to 90 in early learning in Q2, all above industry standards.

September 2022

Bryan Lutz, Luiz Franco Giovanini, and Gabe Lipartito contributed to the extraordinary ongoing work to make sense of the New Worlds Reading Initiative data. Their efforts support our ability to verify eligibility and track outcomes of the growing program, which reached over 120,000 K-5 public school students in Florida during its first year of implementation. 

June 2022

In the 2021-2022 fiscal year, Brittany Gonzalez and Erica Lopez instituted policies and procedures to support a consistent employee experience during recruitment, hiring, onboarding and retention. Their efforts supported 30 new hires, 9 promotions and 18 part-time positions – for a total of 57 hires. Their contributions have had a significant impact on the Center’s 96% full-time employee retention rate.

Amanda Pate and Stephanie Snidarich led an extraordinary group of Literacy Matrix Navigators during the 2021-2022 academic year. They met regularly with the Navigators to ensure that over 1,300 teachers had the support they needed to complete the Literacy Matrix with mastery and receive their State of Florida Reading Endorsement. 

March 2022

The Massachusetts Flamingo Early Learning implementation team, including Ron Viafore, Theresa Loch, and Karen Osarenkhoe, received the Q3 Director’s Achievement Award for improving Massachusetts Early Childcare Leaders’ facilitation skills.

January 2022

Mary Bratsch-Hines and Donny Schrum pulled, cleaned, and processed data across multiple sources and systems to support OKR data. Their efforts helped the Center get closer to our goal of having access to regular data about our impact, scale, and sustainability to inform our decisions.

Nadeige King contributed to notable work in improving the efficiency of our payroll distribution system. The projected 20% drop in the amount of payroll we charge to our operating budget is estimated to save the Center $100K in the 2022-2023 fiscal year, which can now be redistributed to support the Center’s growth efforts in other productive ways.

Great Gator Award

Summer 2024

Matthew Griffin was selected by Jamie Greenspan for his exceptional support and expertise. His kindness, promptness, and thoroughness in answering questions and explaining processes have been invaluable. Matthew consistently provides comprehensive information, enabling informed decision-making, making him a pleasure to work with.

Winter 2024

Jamie Greenspan was selected by Anna Clark for her expertise as a graphic designer. Her contributions to the Lastinger Center have helped streamline the Lastinger Center’s brand and photography. Jamie has also expanded the photo library and started graphic design games in weekly check-ins.

A headshot of Matthew Griffin
Matthew Griffin

Coordinator
Processing

A headshot of Anna Clark
Jamie Greenspan

Coordinator
Graphic Design

Previous Great Gator Award Recipients: 

Anna Clark

Robin Gregory

Lori Gully

Dayna Galganski

Cathy Cavanaugh

Tim Mosunich

Lucianna Grasso

Shaunté Duggins

Tiffany Taylor-Jones

Mary Kay Rodgers

Ron Viafore

Sharon Jones

Bryn Humphrey

Lisa Langley