UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Nicola Kiver, executive assistant to the dean in the College of the Liberal Arts, has been named the 2016 Staff Excellence Award winner.
Established in 1993, the award recognizes the consistently outstanding performance of a staff member who has demonstrated and practiced the philosophy of continuous quality improvement, team spirit, managerial excellence in the performance of assigned duties, and leadership in establishing a quality service orientation, so as to benefit his or her unit and the University.
Colleagues say Kiver’s work implementing the Faculty Activity Information System (FAIS) has been instrumental in helping the University digitize and process promotion, tenure and annual review materials, and is worthy of the award.
She handled the demanding task with “incredible patience, knowledge and appreciation of Penn State’s diversity,” a colleague said.
Kiver helped in all facets of the software rollout, from early design tweaks to staff and faculty training for several colleges.
Kiver’s computing knowledge also helped several departments collect and better understand key data such as student files, budgets, enrollment, funding and publications.
Colleagues say they spotted Kiver’s gift for data entry when she was able to turn around a two-year-old failed digitization project within months. Now, college and departmental files are securely stored in a user-friendly, secure, Web-based server.