
Six UCCS employees, split evenly between faculty and staff, will spend the academic year learning how to become more effective leaders who can successfully address the key challenges of a dynamic university as members of the 2020-21 cohort of the CU Excellence in Leadership Program.
The 2020-21 cohort includes:
- Joanna Bean, director of Alumni Relations and the Annual Fund. Bean oversees programming, communications and events that cultivate engagement and support from among the university’s 45,000 alumni. She also oversees the campus component of the University of Colorado’s annual giving program, which raises money for vital UCCS scholarships and programs from alumni, university friends, community members, parents, faculty, staff and students.
- Chad Garland, interim senior director of the University Center and Ent Center for the Arts. Garland joined UCCS in 2015 and oversees the home for several student service areas and, in a normal year, an event services team that coordinates more than 17,000 events. He is currently providing interim leadership of the Ent Center for the Arts, the five-venue arts complex that opened in January 2018.
- Farida Khan, professor and chair of the Department of Economics in the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. Khan’s research background is in International trade policy, numerical general equilibrium models, and she works on economic development in South Asia, primarily on Bangladesh. She has written on topics related to capital goods, micro-credit, gender, and more recently environmental issues as they connect to indigenous peoples in India and Bangladesh. Her writing also includes topics on the US economy.
- Nick Lockwood, director of Orientation and New Student Outreach. Lockwood built an orientation program that accounts for the entire first-year experience for new students and was a member of the team that won a CU Innovation and Efficiency Award for an orientation mobile app. He was recognized as the UCCS Employee of the Quarter for the fourth quarter of 2019.
- Joel Tonyan, assistant professor of systems and user experience library for the Kraemer Family Library. Tonyan is chair of the Faculty Assembly Sustainability Committee and a recipient of the Campus Sustainability Award. His research is focused on information-seeking behavior and social media analytics, and spearheaded the 2018 Will Eisner Graphic Novel Growth Grant to support creative workshops and materials for veterans at the library through the American Library Association and Will and Ann Eisner Family Foundation.
- Patty Witkowsky, assistant professor and program coordinator for Student Affairs in Higher Education in the Department of Leadership, Research and Foundations for the College of Education. Witkowsky’s research focuses on the experience of graduate students in student affairs graduate preparation programs, as well as student transitions and the experiences of student affairs professionals. She is involved in ACPA: College Student Educators International as the Faculty-in-Residence for the Commission for the Global Dimensions of Student Development and in NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education as the co-Faculty Representative for the Orientation, Transition, and Retention Knowledge Community.
The program, now in its 20th year, brings together employees from each of the four CU campuses and the system office for monthly workshops on topics like communications, fiscal management and strategic thinking. UCCS members participate in additional monthly meetings with cabinet members and propose a new project for the university to undertake. Andrea Cordova, chief of staff, Chancellor’s Office, serves as the liaison for the program with CU.
UCCS Excellence in Leadership program alumni:
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