Valentine's Day Provides Fitting Background for Heart-Felt Thanks to Staff
The scent of salty popcorn in the air presented the first tantalizing hints that something special was unfolding at the Kresge cafeteria on Monday, February 14. No, Martha Stewart was not visiting with bags of homegrown maize. Instead, Barry Bloom, dean of HSPH, was playing master of ceremonies to the school's first Staff Appreciation Day.
"The point of today," said Bloom, "is to take a little time off to thank everybody for making this place special."
Bloom
made his remarks to more than 200 people who gathered at the event. They
munched on heart-shaped cookies, pretzels, and fruit salad and then slaked
their thirst.
The deans of HSPH hosted the event, and others pitched in to help. Deans Bloom, James Ware, Bernita Anderson, Kristine Laping, John Lichten, Paul Riccardi, and Robin Worth sported chef's hats and smiles as they dished out dozens of slices of pie to party-goers.
Staff from Human Resources, Dean Bloom's office, and volunteers organized the event.
The day honored the entire HSPH staff but offered special recognition to the teams that worked on Project ADAPT and the Y2K transition. Bloom called the groups "heroic" in facing formidable problems and then turned the microphone over to Lichten, dean for finance and administration, who complimented the Project ADAPT team. The university-wide project is replacing antiquated computer-based financial and human resources methods with new, uniform systems that are consistent among schools.
University officials implemented the first stage of Project ADAPT in July 1999. The HSPH team included representatives of the financial services, human resources, and academic and administrative departments within the school. Lichten said the work of the HSPH team compared favorably to that of groups from other schools. He thanked everyone at the school for their cooperation in the "largest and most significant change in the history of the university."
Riccardi, dean for operations and administration, followed Lichten with praise of the Y2K team at HSPH that produced a computer bug-free transition over the New Year. Members of Operations and Information Technology met as early as 1998 to tackle the problem and spent nearly two years ensuring that HSPH computers and building systems were Y2K-compliant. On December 31, 1999, a group of Operations and Information Technology staff camped at the school to guard against a problem that never manifested.
"We did a lot of work for what I think we all believed would be a non-event," said Riccardi. But that work paid off three weeks ago, he said, when the school experienced a major electrical outage. All of SPH II and parts of SPH I, Kresge, and the François-Xavier Bagnoud Building were affected, but emergency power systems installed as part of the Y2K preparation kicked in.
The Y2K work ensured not only that building systems continued to perform but also that critical laboratory equipment remained unaffected.
"Y2K hit us three weeks late," said Riccardi. "We passed the test."
Four people won pies after answering correctly HSPH-related trivia questions.
Bloom announced the winners, then summed up the day with a simple observation,
"That was fun."
