OIT Honors Staff With 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.

Nominees

The following individuals were also nominated for the OIT Awards for Excellence:

• Andrew Petersen – Shared Services
• Bill Coker – Security and Compliance
• Fernanda D’Amorim – Technology Support Services
• Rebecca Sitton – Outreach, Communications and Consulting

Jones and Rodriguez will go on to vie for the universitywide Awards for Excellence at a ceremony on June 3 at Stewart Theatre.