Congratulations to the 2023 IT Recognition Award Winners!
The awards were presented as part of the IT Professionals Conferences on June 2, 2023. Watch video of the awards ceremony. Here are the awards and their winners:
Lifetime Achievement
Michael Pitterle, School of Pharmacy – Information Technology
Michael Pitterle is the director of Instructional and Information Technology (IIT) at the School of Pharmacy and an associate professor in the Pharmacy Practice and Translation Research Division. Mike, with the IIT staff, provides information technology services to the school. Mike has worked with faculty and staff to implement technology that improves teaching and learning for students, and has published on multiple innovations in teaching with technology. He is a past member of the Information Technology Committee (ITC), has held leadership positions in Community of Educational Technology Support (ComETS) and Moodle Council, and was the first chairperson of the Instructional Technology Group (ITG). Mike has been a faculty member since 1984 and the director of IIT since 2001.
Janet E. Plato Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Award
Derrian Jones, Division of Information Technology – User Services
A native Madisonian, Derrian (he/him/his) studied electrical engineering at Iowa State University and later pivoted to computer science and linguistics at UW–Madison. After starting his professional career at Wisconsin Physicians Service (WPS), he accepted a computer programming position at UW’s central IT department, now referred to as the Division of Information Technology (DoIT) in 1991, where he has spent the last 31 years providing development, project management, and staff supervision for various administrative services including, the Space Management Office, Identity and Access Management, Transportation Services, IT security, and HR, Payroll and Benefits. Derrian has also served for many years on DoIT’s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee both as a member and leader of the committee.
Ellen La Luzerne Award for Community Engagement
Sara Tate-Pederson, College of Engineering – Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE)
Dynamic IT leader and professional with 25+ years of experience, Sara currently serves in the role of technical compliance manager with Computer-Aided Engineering at UW–Madison. She is involved in IT Connects, serving as a co-lead for the IT Leadership Program Forward (ITLP) steering team, and is a past co-lead and founding steering team member of Women in IT (UW-WIT). She currently serves as past chair and steering team member on the Big Ten Academic Alliance Women+ in IT Peer Group (BTAA WIT+). Throughout her career she has been an active participant and facilitator on a wide variety of strategic initiatives that promote inclusion, equity, diversity and belonging in the workplace. Outside of her service to UW–Madison, she enjoys opportunities to hike in our national parks, indulge in hobby geology and build with Legos.
Rising Star
Laurel Belman, Division of Information Technology – Communications
Laurel plans and executes internal and external Division of Information Technology (DoIT) events and meetings, including the DoIT All Staff Meeting, IT Professionals Conference and Information and Technology Leadership Conference.
Team Achievement
Helen C. White IT User Support team (led by Will Maybock, User Support supervisor)
Since 1998, the Helen C. White IT User Support team has managed and supported IT for 11 academic departments, centers, and institutes within the College of Letters & Science, located in Helen C. White Hall and the University Club. These include our home department the Information School (iSchool), African American Studies, Philosophy, English, the Writing Center, Center for the Humanities, Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures, Institute for Research in the Humanities (IRH), Center for Visual Cultures, the Max Kade Institute, and the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes.
Team members Greg Putnam, Will Maybock, Andrew Leinberger, Sam Ranabhat, Summit Koegel and John Fitzpatrick provide a wide range of services including computer support, endpoint management, classroom and lab design, grant writing, networking, purchasing, cybersecurity, consulting and technical integration, as well as managing administrative and instructional servers. The team members also serve as liaisons to their excellent campus partners and external service providers. Helen C. White IT emphasizes working closely with their member departments, faculty, staff, and students to provide solutions that empower them to succeed in the core missions of the university: teaching, learning, research, and outreach.
Transformational Achievement
Will Kraus, Division of Information Technology – Application Infrastructure Services
Will has worked as software engineer/project manager/business analyst on the Web and Mobile Solutions (WaMS) team within DoIT since 2015. He is a full stack developer in web and augmented reality applications. His custom data-driven web applications support many departments around campus and his augmented reality applications focus on research of novel applications with this cutting-edge technology.
Will is honored to receive this award! Working for the Office of the Secretary of the Faculty and the Office of the Secretary of the Academic Staff was one of his first assignments when he started here 8 years ago. Although tracking committee memberships and assigning employees to their shared government districts doesn’t sound like a ton of fun, the people who nominated him are the reason it was his pleasure to create a web application to fit their needs. He would like to thank them for the nomination and recognition. He would also like to thank his coworkers in the Web and Mobile Solutions group. They have a truly wonderful environment of building each other up and knowledge sharing that makes everyone thrive. Although most of his team members have not directly worked on these projects, he considers this a team award as much as it is his. Thanks team!
Unsung Hero
Vladimir Brik, IceCube (WIPAC)
Vlad attended UW–Madison for his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science. He took his first steps toward a career in IT as an undergraduate student employee at the Department of Chemistry. For the past 10 years he has worked as a system administrator at the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC). He has been involved in many aspects of WIPAC’s IT infrastructure, including virtualization, high throughput computing and storage.
Mark Abramson, College of Agriculture and Life Science – Life Sciences Communication
Mark has been the IT tech for Life Sciences Communication (LSC) since 2015. In addition, Mark manages equipment rentals for the various LSC classes. Prior to joining LSC, Mark provided technology support for American Family Insurance and M&I Bank (now BMO Harris Bank). Mark is an alumnus of LSC with a bachelor’s degree in agricultural journalism.