The Brown School of Engineering has awarded its annual Dean’s Service and Spirit of Excellence awards for the 2023-24 academic year. Human Resources Specialist Rita Fitzgerald was awarded the Dean’s Service award, while Grants and Contracts Specialist Aaron Masri received the Spirit of Excellence honor.
The Dean’s Service award, established during the 2012-13 academic year, was created to recognize a non-managing employee who has made a specific contribution or provided outstanding service in the School of Engineering. It recognizes the performance of an individual who has been a positive instrument of change, made significant contributions, and who has provided outstanding service to internal and external constituents. As one of the most reliable and knowledgeable people in the School of Engineering, Fitzgerald’s work was lauded by her coworkers who noted how intricate and complex payroll for engineering graduate students can be. Because of her impeccable work, she was also asked to take on the processing of I-BEAM and Biomed BME graduate students in the past year, an additional 40+ students each month to the already more than 700 individuals in the school. “The accuracy and efficiency of Fitzgerald’s time management, finance, organizational skills and incredibly diligent work allowed other members of the School to spend less time on this work and to be able to spend time on other work to help the School meet its goals,” said her colleague.
In addition, she also handles HR recruiting and hiring processes for staff, the hiring of temporary workers, costing allocations and payroll accounting adjustments for graduate students and staff, and payroll actual report reconciliation. One of the biggest contributions she made last year was refurbishing the presentation and content of the SoE New Hire Orientation process, collaborating on how to best update the presentation to make the content more engaging and helpful to new hires.
The Spirit of Excellence Award was created during the 2014-15 academic year to be presented annually to an employee who embraces the vision of the School of Engineering through his or her accomplishments during the previous academic year. Masri’s exceptional performance in May and June of this year stood out significantly, as he played a crucial role in the successful submission of an extraordinarily large and complex ARPA-H grant application, valued at $41 million. This grant involved collaboration with four hospitals located in Boston, Houston, Miami, and Providence, as well as multiple centers within Brown University, including the Center for Computation and Visualization and the Center for Digital Health.
Despite the exceptionally tight six-week deadline to submit a full proposal, Masri coordinated the efforts of six subawardees and two Brown centers to complete a detailed and complicated cost proposal to meet the deadline. “His ability to manage these complex logistics, ensuring timely and effective communication with all grant management teams of the subaward institutions, while accommodating the varying timelines of researchers for the development of scientific components that influenced the budget, was truly remarkable,” noted the principal investigator of the project.
“Moreover, Masri’s integration of the efforts of diverse teams from multiple institutions has fostered stronger collaborative relationships, not only within Brown University but also with external hospitals and research centers. This collaborative approach has laid a foundation for future interdisciplinary projects that will benefit from the enhanced partnerships he has helped to establish.”
Both awards were presented by Sorensen Family Dean of Engineering Tejal Desai at the School’s annual summer gathering of faculty and staff.