The Distinguished Service Award recognizes more than the “employee of the year.” This award is given to LLCC employees who demonstrate exemplary leadership and service to the college community, promote a student-focused environment and exhibit a strong commitment to the college’s core values. Service is a matter of the job. Leadership can be provided in subtle ways. This award recognizes those who provide service and leadership beyond the minimum. Nominations should clearly describe what qualities exhibited by the nominee through his/her performance, attitude, behavior and action put them in the elite class of “Distinguished Service Award Recipient.”   

Recipients of the Distinguished Service Award will be selected from the nomination pool. If no one is nominated in a particular category, no award will be given. The committee does not widen the pool beyond those nominations received, so your nomination is important! The selection committee is comprised of past recipients of the award and other members of the college community. All employment classifications are represented. 

To make a nomination, please submit the nomination form (available on HR portal), along with an essay about the nominee. The essay can be as long or short as you want it to be. The quality of the writing is not what is important; what is important is providing concrete examples of the areas identified in the nomination form. Simply stating that the nominee exhibits these qualities is not sufficient. The information provided in the essay will be the basis of the evaluation for the selection committee. Nomination forms are due to HR by Monday, April 19, 2021. For more information, please feel free to contact Kim Elder at 217-786-2214 or kimberly.elder@llcc.edu. 

LLCC’s current employee appreciation and recognition program annually recognizes employees who have reached a milestone service anniversary or who will be retiring from the college within the fiscal year. This program includes individual recognition and the presentation of a personalized gift, a service year lapel pin and a framed certificate during our annual spring ceremony. Last summer, LLCC received notification that MD Designs, Inc., a longtime partner of the recognition program, was closing its doors. This company has provided the college with our employee recognition gifts for over 16 years.

Soon after this news came, a group was formed and tasked with finding a new gift vendor. This group was made up of a diverse pool of faculty and staff from across divisions, across classifications, and with a variety of years of service for the purposes of finding a new and suitable gift vendor for our upcoming FY21 program. The focus group members include Lyndsey Craigmiles-Brooks, Gailyn Draper, Danny Guthals, Tammy Kuhn-Schnell, Keri Mason, Tisha Miller, Sam Reif, Brian Tweryon, Jason Waddell and Kayla Weitzel. When the group convened, discussions regarding our current program took place and a few concerns were presented from the representative groups. It was decided to focus our efforts on finding a new gift vendor while taking into consideration those concerns that had the biggest impact on employee satisfaction. This included updated/improved gift options and the timeliness of recognition.

After a presentation and interview process, the focus group enthusiastically selected Terryberry as our appreciation and recognition partner beginning in spring 2021. For more than a century, Terryberry has been an industry leader in helping organizations develop, implement and manage employee recognition programs.  Not only did Terryberry address our current interests, but they have also provided the potential for a 360° recognition platform that will allow LLCC to expand our recognition program in the future. So, exactly why Terryberry?

Stay tuned for next week’s LincIn article titled “Why Terryberry?”

LLCC will be hosting a town hall for faculty and staff on April 1, 2021, 2 p.m., during which Dr. David Acheson will provide information and answer your questions about the COVID-19 vaccines that are currently available. Dr. Acheson practiced internal medicine and infectious diseases in the United Kingdom before coming to the United States, serving has a Chief Medical Officer at the USDA and FDA. He has published extensively and is internationally recognized for both his public health expertise in food safety and his research in infectious diseases. Look for future LincIn articles for the link to this town hall. If you are unable to attend at this date/time, the session will be recorded and available for viewing.  If you have questions that you would like addressed during this session, please email those to Nicole Ralph at nicole.ralph@llcc.edu.

SURS is urging members to carefully read emails offering retirement counseling. SURS members are receiving unsolicited, potentially misleading emails from companies offering retirement counseling. The emails appear to come from SURS or appear to represent SURS, but they do not. More information can be found on the SURS website.