Lone Pine Excellence Awards Recipients to Be Honored April 3

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The Culbert Award, Dartmouth’s highest staff honor, goes to ITC’s Jonathan Crossett.

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people gathered inside the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge
The DELTA Summit team planned and executed a first-of-its-kind professional development summit for educators at the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge. The DELTA Summit planning team received the Innovation Award. (Photo by Eli Burakian ’00)
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The winners of the Lone Pine Excellence Awards for 2018, including the Sheila Culbert Distinguished Employee Award, the College’s highest staff honor, will be celebrated at an event on April 3.

This is the inaugural year for the Lone Pine Employee Recognition program, which established five new service awards for individuals and teams exemplifying Dartmouth’s commitment to excellence in the following categories: collaboration; passion and commitment; innovation; leadership; and unsung hero. The program also serves as the new home for the Culbert Award, which was previously announced during the annual employee service awards.

“The Lone Pine Recognition Program aims to foster a deeper culture of appreciation across campus,” says Chief Human Resources Officer Scot Bemis. “The goal of the program is to recognize the efforts of our colleagues, promote collaboration, acknowledge the value of diversity, and hold up the excellent work of our colleagues. In short, we are honoring staff who model the core values of the College.”

The award ceremony will take place from 3:30 to 5 p.m. on April 3 at Alumni Hall in the Hopkins Center for the Arts. Members of the Dartmouth community are invited to attend, and asked to RSVP by March 28. The ceremony will be followed by a reception for award recipients and their guests.

The 2018 Sheila Culbert Distinguished Employee Award Recipient

The Sheila Culbert Distinguished Employee Award goes to Jonathan Crossett, senior database administrator for Information, Technology, and Consulting (ITC). Crossett’s responsibilities include researching new products and vendors, developing training sessions on the new technologies, and providing direct service to campus clients.

Executive Vice President Rick Mills says Crossett was recognized by scores of coworkers, clients, students, and faculty members who supported his nomination as a person of unparalleled dedication and commitment.

“All who work with him say that Jonathan’s positivity and contagious enthusiasm for his work and his colleagues, and his dedication to making Dartmouth’s IT better in all capacities, is an inspiration to all,” Mills says. “As an employee, he clearly epitomizes the phrase ‘above and beyond,’ and I am delighted he has been chosen as this year’s recipient of the Sheila Culbert Distinguished Employee Award, the College’s highest staff honor.”

Established in 2008 by then-President James Wright and his wife, Susan Wright, the Culbert Award recognizes a Dartmouth staff member for exemplary work performance, unwavering commitment to Dartmouth, and relentless pursuit of excellence. Sheila Culbert worked at Dartmouth from 1989 to 2008 in several roles, including as an adviser to President Wright. 

The 2018 Lone Pine Excellence Award Recipients

The Lone Pine Excellence Award Selection Working Group was fortunate to have had an outstanding pool of close to 90 nominations across all five categories. 

The Collaboration Award, presented for exemplary ability to work with others from a wide range of perspectives toward a common purpose, goes to Technical Director Jason Merwin and Costume Shop Manager Jennifer Bilbo in the Department of Theater. Merwin is a technical director who, his co-workers say, is “always going out of his way, far and above what is expected of him, to facilitate the vision of productions onstage.” Bilbo’s co-workers say they are thankful that, she has “transformed our costume shop from a rather fractious and disorganized space into a smooth-running machine.”

The Innovation Award, for unusual initiative and skill in developing and improving equipment, programs, work methods, and procedures for the betterment of Dartmouth and the broader world, goes to DELTA Summit planning team members Colleen Goodhue, Elli Goudzwaard, Adam Nemeroff, Mike Goudzwaard, Elaine Livingston, Ashley Doolittle, Tracy Dustin-Eichler, Renata Baptista, Susan Simon, Casey Aldrich, Tracie Williams, and Cindy Cogswell. (Cogswell has since left the College.) The awardees come from divisions across the College.

The DELTA Summit team planned and executed a first-of-its-kind professional development summit for experiential educators at the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge, a supporter of the nomination notes. “The DELTA Summit was wildly successful,” wrote a colleague. “It was also highly innovative, as a direct result of the incredibly bright, energetic, imaginative Dartmouth professionals who came together to make it happen.”

The Leadership Award, for the ability to inspire others to improve the quantity and quality of their work, and for outstanding mentoring and commitment to professional development, goes to Tracey Dustin-Eichler, director of the Center for Social Impact. Dustin-Eichler “models from the top how to truly listen and mentor everyone to continue to grow as professionals,” a colleague writes.

The Passion and Commitment Award, for demonstrating unwavering passion and commitment that extends beyond the job requirements and inspiring that kind of commitment in others, goes to Joanne Needham, program officer at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy. Needham, a co-worker at the Rockefeller Center writes, “is a wonderful colleague and a source of inspiration and joy. She is committed to making the world and her community a better place and this is evident by how passionately she works toward bringing to campus public program speakers who share their own ideas to make positive change.”

The Unsung Hero Award, presented for performance that goes above and beyond expectations without fanfare, is presented to Kristin Miller, program coordinator at the Arthur L. Irving Institute for Energy and Society. Miller, her co-workers say, “is the first to assess what’s needed and lead the team toward solutions while capturing lessons-learned so we can be better prepared the next time.”

Nominations for the 2019 Lone Pine Excellence Awards will be accepted at the Lone Pine Recognition Program website Nov. 1 through Dec. 13, 2019, and the award recipients will be recognized at a special event in the spring of 2020.

William Platt can be reached at william.c.platt@dartmouth.edu.

Bill Platt