This story is the first part in a series on the 2021 Award of Excellence winners.
On Niagara Day 2021, NC made history by recognizing a group of employees who collaborated for a common purpose with the inaugural Outstanding Team Award of Excellence. The Awards of Excellence are a highlight of Niagara Day celebrations and honour outstanding achievement in the areas of work, NC values and culture, and commitment to the NC community.
“At NC, we excel when we band together and harness one another’s energy, enthusiasm, and expertise to solve complex problems, rise to meet new challenges, and develop new systems and supports for student success. This year’s recipients of the Team Award did exactly that,” said Pam Skinner, Senior Vice-President, College Operations at Niagara Day.
The Tap-In System Team, a cross-functional group of staff from ITS, International, and Student Services, were honoured with a special trophy created by staff and faculty in the School of Trades. Facing a circumstance that NC had never experienced, this team came together to develop solutions that reflect the essence of NC: a system and processes that are trailblazing indeed, and were designed to maintain the welcoming and passionate heart of this College amid public health restrictions. Their innovative efforts supported a secure and unified College-wide system for campus access requests, daily health screening, proof of vaccination, and rapid testing.
As a result of this system, NC students were able to safely engage in critical on-campus learning to complete programs and achieve their dreams.
The Tap-In System Team was recognized at the Virtual Niagara Day celebration.
The Tap-In System team includes:
Brett Didemus, Cole Hayes, Omer Ali, Rich McConnery, John Hilbing, Ryan Morris, Shawn Kelley, Lisa Kelley, Brandon Friesen, Mark Legosz, Shelley Calnan, Gary McCormick. Shafqat Syed, Lucy Nigro-Stefanchuk, Mat Steglinski, Joe Sorrenti, Claire Rosati, Kate Wiley, Tara Fox, Kelsie Stunden, Sarah Scott, and Scott Slaney.
We caught up with the Tap-in System Team, who are a shining example of NC’s spirit of innovation:
Q: How did you approach the tap-in system project as a cross-functional team?
This cross-functional team came together in many ways. To begin with, the actual tap-in system was developed before many of the other Universities and Colleges in Ontario. Our IT department did a great job creating a solution that was designed to be flexible and open ended so adaptations could be implemented as needed based on the input from the cross functional project team. From there our team developed and started to meet frequently to make decisions, schedule resources, and much more. The team was pulled together from multiple departments including IT, International, Security, and Student Services.
As you can imagine in such unprecedented times, the team itself had very little experience in proofs of vaccinations, and we had to learn quickly. Marie Colangelo, from the Allied Health Department, was an amazing resource, training many of the team on how to read proofs of vaccination from Ontario.
Q: What was it like to collaborate with other departments on the tap-in system project?
This has been a great opportunity to meet other people in other departments, but in a manner that is very unusual. Many of us have never had the opportunity to work so closely with other departments, and yet many of us have still never met in person. We created a very safe chat space that allowed us to be open and honest with very sensitive information. Putting 25 strangers together in this chat, we all came together well, helping and reaching out whenever a problem arose. Formal meetings for this team did not occur, as meetings took place in smaller groups, and everything has been done remotely. It is quite amazing how it all worked out when you really reflect upon it. It will be great when we are all back on campus again and can start to meet in hallways and coffee line ups. The work has been ongoing, and the project continues, and we continue to work together every time the public health guidelines change.
Q: How does it feel or what does it mean to you to be recognized by your colleagues and the College with the inaugural Team Award of Excellence?
As a team when we think about how many teams were deserving of this award, it is safe to say that we were surprised to be the first recipients of the Team Award of Excellence. Many of us, especially those in IT, are those who work behind the scenes to help keep NC running, and therefore are not often thought of in these awards ceremonies. To have it acknowledged that without this time, there wouldn’t necessarily be the level of safety that is provided to all those on campus is very special.
Q: What do you consider to be the most rewarding aspect of this kind of work?
In a time where this has never been done before, this group of individuals came together and have to date approved more than 21,780 proofs of vaccinations! We have made NC a safer place to be and have done so with as a group who would never have been pulled together otherwise. We have learned things beyond our normal roles, and have in turn learned what we are capable of doing at NC.
