February 10, 2021
Ben Ward, Stacey Bailey and Greg Dressman recognized as Professional Staff of the Week
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From left: Ben Ward, Stacey Bailey and Greg Dressman. |
Ben Ward, instructional technologist, College of Business Administration; Stacey Bailey, assistant director of International Student and Scholar Services; and Greg Dressman, director of enterprise technology for the Division of Information Technology, were recognized as the Professional Staff of the Week at the Feb. 6 and 9 men's home basketball games, respectively. Faculty Senate, the Office of the President, K-State Athletics and the Division of Communications and Marketing wish to recognize these individuals' contributions to K-State.
Ward has worked around the clock helping faculty adapt courses to the online environment since the onset of the COVID-19 complications was thrust on us. Additionally, Ward is a passionate advocate for student learning and using technology to enhance the learning environment, not detract from it. His knowledge of learning pedagogy is amazing and he will push faculty as far as they are willing to imagine to bring innovation to online courses and campus courses. Ward has co-taught EDCI 943 Principles of College Teaching for the past 12 years with the director of the Teaching and Learning Center. He knows good teaching and he is passionate about sharing his knowledge with faculty who wish to take advantage of it and his creativity in designing interesting yet useful digital content.
Bailey is an absolute rock star. She has been working in International Student and Scholar Services since 2003. Bailey works with a high level of responsibility. She is extremely reliable and will do whatever it takes to get the job done. She is our lead immigration regulation advisor for students and works with a team of two others. In the area of regulatory compliance, she is top in the profession. She thinks critically about each situation and finds the best options or solutions. Not only does she supervise, train and mentor the other advisors, but she also keeps our students aware of their regulatory compliance. She is always on top of all the systems that need monitoring as well as individual student situations. It is imperative that SEVIS, KSIS, ImageNow and immigration advising are done at the highest of quality and she never disappoints. Along with immigration advising, Bailey supervises our graduate assistant and the international coffee hour program. She coordinates our collaborations with athletics. She also supervises the advisors on their programming responsibilities, including scholarship management, student organization advising, basic language training, and orientation. She has been around so long, she has practically done every job at some point and has a great understanding of each task.
Dressman is a key member of the Division of Information Technology team at K-State. He also serves as an architect of the cloud-first strategy and is co-chair of the Cloud Center of Excellence. After the Hale Library fire, Dressman was the calm among the storm. By 7 a.m. the morning of May 23, 2018, he and his team had a list of priorities of which services to restore and in what order. They worked to organize and lead us through bringing systems back online so K-State could function. They worked 11 days straight, with little sleep, to restore services and to strategize the future of the K-State computing infrastructure that had limited reliance on a physical data center. Since then, Dressman has led many significant efforts to move critical systems to the cloud or more redundant infrastructure. He has saved the university countless dollars in his sound approach to the cloud strategy. After the fire and the restoration of services, the next step was to conceptualize the way forward with a move of most of the machines out of Hale and a phased approach to a cloud strategy. From 1,300 virtual machines before the fire to a little more than 300 virtual machines in Hale Library in June, he created a plan and followed through with it. Most universities would have taken years to do what Dressman and his team accomplished in six months. He and his team are one of the reasons that K-State was prepared for the challenges associated with a remote workforce in March 2020.