The annual Employee Service Awards is a ceremony held at Ferris to honor and recognize long-term professors, administrators and faculty.
Faculty and staff members will be honored for continuous five year blocks of service from five all the way to 40 years at the Ferris State University, complete with a slide show of the awarded employees and a dessert buffet.
The list of employees being honored at this ceremony represent 3,575 years of total service to Ferris.
Budgetary Planning and Analysis Director Sally Depew, who is one of the three faculty members being honored for 40 years of service to the university, said that she is looking forward to being able to see colleagues that she hasn’t seen in a while at the ceremony. Depew has been in the Budget Office since 1981 and has previously been in the college of education.
“[What I enjoy most about working at Ferris is] my colleagues, and the opportunity to interact with people across the campus on a vast array of issues,” said Depew. “Ferris is a dynamic university and it’s interesting and rewarding to watch the difference that our institution makes in the lives of students. As a proud Ferris graduate, I have really appreciated the opportunities that Ferris has provided me throughout my career.”
Depew graduated from Ferris with a bachelors of science degree in business teacher education.
Also on the list for an award for 20 years of service is mathematics professor Jean Walling. She started out as a temporary instructor in 1995 and then moved up to full time.
Walling said that at the ceremony, she’s looking forward to “being validated and recognized, when you’ve been working and doing the best you can for 20 years and someone acknowledges that and says ‘you’ve been here a long time, and thank you.’”
The students are what Walling says she enjoys most at Ferris. “Especially when I teach in the fall, they’re excited and eager to work, and that’s so much fun. I think because every fall, teaching starts over and it’s refreshing, you always look forward to it. Even though I’ve been doing the same thing for 20 years, every time I get a new room full of students, it’s brand new again. So I’m looking forward to being able to keep doing what I’m doing. I’m really lucky that I get to do what I like to do.”
Walling graduated from the University of Michigan and received her masters at University of Arizona.
After nominating a wide array of candidates, Ferris’ Staff and Team Committee decided the recipients of a few other awards for distinguished staff and team. Recipients of the awards include Janelle Hemingway, Fernando Labra, Angela Morris, Velislav Pavlov, Cinthia Vander Sloot and Angela Roman.
“Congratulations to all of our award recipients for their outstanding service to the university during this past year!” wrote President David Eisler in his weekly memorandum to faculty and staff.
The annual Employee Service Awards celebration will take place this Thursday, April 30 from 3 to 5 pm in the University Center Ballroom 202.