2011 Annual Award Recipients

PDP Executive Director's Award

Peter Kircher

Training Program Coordinator

Department of Temporary Assistance Training

Peter is an incredibly dedicated employee and this award goes to Peter in recognition of his outstanding and continued contributions to furthering PDP's mission and organizational goals.

Peter also received recognition for 30 years of service to PDP. Countless times over the years, Peter stepped in with little or no notice to deliver trainings when others became unavailable despite having his own overfilled plate of work. Over the last year alone, Peter stepped in eight different times to deliver different programs due to the unavailability of staff.

Most notable is that Peter was outstanding in delivering each of these diverse programs despite having little time to prepare. Peter, a long-time DDI trainer, also managed to squeeze in another delivery of Essentials of Leadership training for PDP staff, and he has delivered many other PDP-DDI training courses over the years.

Peter is an amazingly outstanding coach and mentor to new trainers. He has an exceptional reputation with our OTDA sponsor staff and social service district customers, and he has been an outstanding representative to multiple advisory groups for PDP, most recently the OTDA Joint Application Design (JADS) group. Peter's subject matter expertise is strong, deep, and yes I believe to be irreplaceable. Peter actively continues to build his knowledge, becoming expert on new technology and content, such as training with iLinc and myWorkspace - which enabled him to lead us through a redesign of the Food Stamp Worker Training Institute this past year.

Peter's leadership and subject matter expertise also enabled us to expand our TrainingSpace products and iLinc training portfolio over the last couple of years, including three food stamps web-based training courses for New York City, multiple modules for the Temporary Assistance Budgeting and Coding course, and four iLinc courses.

If you know Peter well, then you also know that he never complains about work assignments and is always positive with staff and other colleagues. I can truly attest that over the past 27 years that I've known him, I've never heard Peter ever say anything negative about others. You'd also know that Peter is not a flashy person and he would prefer to be quietly working hard in the background rather than be in the spotlight. But, you should also know, Peter is one of the most dedicated, loyal, and hard-working employees who can always be counted on to take on any assignment no matter what and without hesitation.

Peter is deeply committed to PDP's mission and core values and beliefs. He exemplifies this in his work and his strong professionalism. In an organization like ours, with constantly shifting priorities, endless scheduling and staffing dilemmas, and a constantly full plate of work, Peter stands out. It would be very hard for the Department of Temporary Assistance Training and PDP to accomplish the high quality and quantity of programs without Peter's hand in the mix.

Congratulations on being this year's recipient of the Executive Director's Award - it's well deserved!

PDP Outstanding Team Award

Child Care Time and Attendance System Team (CCTA)

Julie Aversa, D'Andrea Brooks, Timothy Buddenhagen, Kim Demott, Daniel Forgett, Leanne Friedlander, Tricia Gagnon, Susan Kalafut, Kelly Keck, Jodi Kerper, Catherine Klose, Donna Larimore, Kristine Loucks, Sandra Lynch, Tammy Nardini, Michael Noble, Kelly Ryan, Patricia Seeberger, Diane Tesiny

The Child Care Time and Attendance Training Team's work during 2011 exemplifies PDP's vision as a premiere public service continuing professional education and training program.

The CCTA team worked within a unique public-private partnership with, Controltec and IBM to develop and submit the proposal that was selected via a competitive bid process.

This project was funded by the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act and required work to be completed within a tight time frame as set forth in the legislation. To address this, CCTA used the public/private partnership model to develop, train and deploy the standards and skills required for this project within the 16 months. The public/private partnership proved to be a big asset in the determination of the types of training materials to be developed. Data from the partnership guided the CCTA team in the development of three specific training manuals for three role-based training sessions offered in a classroom setting to 1,116 staff across 37 different training locations over the course of six and a half months.

In addition, the team developed two online modules accompanied by quick reference cards that provided 24 hours, seven day a week access to care providers and parents of children in childcare allowing them to obtain training at any time, at any location which had a computer and internet access.

PDP Outstanding Trainer Award

Ellen Schaefer

Senior Education Specialist

Medication Administration Training Program

Ellen was hired in January 2011, and at the time she was the only trainer in the Medical Administration Training Program (MAT). Without another trainer in the MAT program to learn from, Ellen was able to draw upon the expertise of various staff as well as her own initiative to not only learn a complex curriculum but become an expert training of the content in short order.

The MAT program on average recertify 20 trainers per year, but in 2011 Ellen completed 69 recertifications. This is a record for the MAT program. Ellen achieved this goal while working 80% during the first half of the year by being flexible in the use of her hours, often changing her days off to accommodate the schedules of the trainers she needed to recertify.

When not training, Ellen has reviewed all the MAT programs materials including countless curriculum, participant materials, tests and the online course materials in order to ensure consistency. Ellen worked diligently to ensure that the MAT course materials were updated and also available in Spanish. She has created a specialized MAT course which was presented in 2011, at a conference in Saratoga Springs. Ellen has also successfully assisted in the implementation of a new process for recertification which has met with positive reviews by trainers. Along with these achievements, Ellen for a period of time during the year was without a project assistant and during that time Ellen took on the additional responsibilities of that position.

Ellen continues to receive highly positive evaluations from the trainers she trains and is well respected by her peers and our sponsors.

PDP Outstanding Professional Staff Award

Julie Aversa

Manager

Finance & Adminstration

Julie does outstanding work on budget preparation, proposal coordination with the Research Foundation, and sponsor reporting for PDP most notable is her work on PDP's former and recently received awards for the Health Workforce Retraining Initiative Project (HWRI) for 2010-2011 and 2011-2012, her work on the Higher Education Services Corporation Project (HESC), and the Public Service Workshop Program (PSWP) for the new two year award for 2012-2013.

All of the contracts required extremely detailed budgets and have significant contract reporting requirements. For example, in the case of the HWRI project, there were sixteen separate budgets times two for the two year allocation. The HESC project requires extremely detailed mid-year and end of the year reporting which can run up to 40 pages plus. The new PSWP agreement required several versions of the budget during the contract negotiation process with the Governor's Office of Employee Relations (GOER) which began in the later part of 2011 and was recently finalized. Julie managed these tasks in addition to other budgeting and financial management responsibilities of OCFS and OTDA projects.

We at PDP are frequent receipt ants of kudos for our programmatic work from sponsors and trainees, but the vital budget development, proposal preparation, contract reporting and budget modifications, those crucial tasks that allow us to accomplish our programmatic work often go recognized.

Through the use of strong analytical skills, outstanding attention to detail, and extreme patience, Julie has completed the behind the scenes work needed to submit successful proposals and manage the financial aspects of our contracts. With her contributions PDP was able to bring in a significant amount of new work.

PDP Outstanding Administrative Support Staff Award

Peggy Dayer

Administrative Assistant 2

Department of Temporary Assistance Training

Peggy brought a wealth of PDP experience to her current position in the Department of Temporary Assistance Training, having provided invaluable administrative support to a number of PDP project areas over her 14 year career. This broad experience within PDP coupled with Peggy's focus on supporting our mission means her customers are assisted and projects are supported with great skill, clarity, understanding and empathy.

Peggy's work in 2011 spanned four projects: CEES01, DDD01, HRA01, and MGMTCRS - representing nearly 30 separate training programs. Peggy juggled multiple deliverables that ranged in size and scope, and customer needs, for which Peggy handled arrangements and registrations. This task included more than 100 deliverables, most of which were multi-day events with overnight accommodations and trainee travel reimbursements. Peggy also provided support to four large, high profile conferences with over 908 trainees in total.

Peggy provides excellent customer service to both internal and external customers. Internally, Peggy assisted customers who wandered by her desk from the training center or those who were looking for other offices. She also answers questions and offered assistance to staff outside of her department. Externally, for the Eat Smart New York conferences and the HEAP statewide meeting, Peggy researched and found ideal specialty folders and the project sponsors and trainees for both events were pleased.

A focus of Peggy's work in 2011 was working with trainers to assess curriculum to verify that most current materials are in project files, as well as to re-organize electronic project files and crate training materials. Peggy took the initiative for this and also helped set deadlines with multiple teams to accomplish these tasks. Peggy's continued dedication to PDP and her contributions in 2011 to meeting customer needs and PDP's mission have been outstanding.