BU Student Employees of the Year Celebrated at Annual Ceremony

Colleen Courtney, student employment services manager (from left); the Graduate and the Undergraduate Student Employees of the Year, Lauren O’Malley (LAW’18) and Anna Saucier (CAS’18); SPH Professor Frank (Rich) Feeley, Supervisor of the Year runner-up; and Christine McGuire, VP and associate provost, at the April 11 Employee of the Year award ceremony. Photo by Dave Green

• 10,000 student employees work across the University every year
• 4 were honored at last week’s Student Employee of the Year award ceremony
• Student supervisors were also recognized at the ceremony

BU couldn’t function without the army of 10,000 student employees who help staff virtually every department on campus, from Dining Services to the Occupational Health Center. Last week, four were celebrated at the annual Student Employee of the Year award ceremony, held at the Rajen Kilachand Center for Integrated Life Sciences & Engineering. Student supervisors were also honored.

“We rely on our student employees to help keep the University running smoothly,” student employment services manager Colleen Courtney told the audience. “We know that students who work while attending school graduate at higher rates. There are many reasons for this, but one that we can see is the personal support they receive from their supervisors and peers. So today we want to celebrate the students and supervisors who are creating a stronger, more robust community every day.”

Anna Saucier (CAS’18, SAR’18) was named Undergraduate Student Employee of the Year, and Lauren O’Malley (LAW’18) Graduate Student Employee of the Year. Each received $300 and a plaque. Maya Marshall (CGS’16, COM’18) took home the Undergraduate Outstanding Service Award and Mia Trentadue (Sargent’17, SPH’18) the Graduate Outstanding Service Award. Both awards came with a $100 and a plaque.

To be considered for an award, student workers must be nominated by their supervisors, who write a letter describing the student’s job responsibilities and accomplishments and traits like reliability, quality of work, initiative, professionalism, and creativeness.

The Student Employment office selects the top nominations and a panel of judges from various BU departments chooses the Graduate and Undergraduate Student Employees of the Year, whose names are then submitted to the Northeast Association of Student Employment Administrators to be considered for state, regional, and national awards. The judges also choose the Undergraduate and Graduate Outstanding Service Award winners.

Saucier has been the office assistant in the Sargent Choice Nutrition Center for more than two years. In that role, she had to master the ins and outs of insurance so she could check patient benefits, deal with complicated claims, process billing and records information, and ultimately better assist patients. With graduation looming, Saucier got to work creating an intern’s guide to her job and training her replacement.

As a freshman, Saucier was featured in a BU Today article about working to overcome a traumatic brain injury (TBI), which she suffered in a high school soccer game. Today she is fully recovered, and she recently presented on the benefits of college students with TBI using iPads at the Massachusetts Association for Occupational Therapy Conference.

After graduation next month, Saucier plans to earn a master’s degree in medical science and then go to medical school. This semester, she’s been shadowing an oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, an experience she’s loved. “Anything helping others is really what I want to do,” she says.

Leslie Caiola (Sargent’20), the Nutrition Center staff coordinator, nominated Saucier, lauding the significant impact she has had on the center and its patients, students, faculty, and staff. “I often forget that Anna is a college senior and think of her as my direct colleague,” Caiola wrote in her nomination letter. “Anna’s attention to detail, creative thinking, proactive nature, excellent communication skills, and incredible amount of patience all contribute to her ability to excel in this role.”

O’Malley has been a library research assistant at the School of Law’s Fineman and Pappas Libraries for almost two years. In fact, she is the first student to hold the title, and her success in the job has led the libraries’ administrators to expand the research assistant program to include more students. In her role, O’Malley has provided support for a number of projects, ranging from helping professors edit their manuscripts to grappling with complex legal issues, such as domestic relations and civil rights law. Each project involves weeding through numerous legal and interdisciplinary databases.

“Within the department, Lauren has built a reputation as a detailed researcher who is professional in her interactions, and who can always be counted on to finish a project on time, if not ahead of time,” wrote senior legal information librarian Jenna Fegreus in her nomination letter. “Lauren brings an enthusiasm and positive attitude to the job that is unparalleled… [She] has set a very high bar for those who come after her, and I anticipate that she will do great things in her career.”

O’Malley, who also staffs the reference desk, has already lined up a job at PricewaterhouseCoopers, working in international tax law. “I really like performing the research in my job,” she says. “You get to touch on a lot of diverse projects that some other research positions might not see.”

Marshall was honored with the undergrad Outstanding Service Award for her work as the office assistant in the LAW Dean’s Office. Trentadue, the grad student Outstanding Service Award winner, is a Student Health Service Wellness & Prevention graduate assistant.

Heidi Freimanis-Cordts (CFA’07,’09), staff coordinator at Marsh Chapel, was named Supervisor of the Year. Also honored was runner-up Frank (Rich) Feeley, a School of Public Health associate professor of global health.

Freimanis-Cordts’ student employee Elizabeth Sorensen (SAR’18) raved about her boss, saying that she makes “hospitality look effortless with her grace and style (and it is not).” Freimanis-Cordts wears many hats, among them assisting the Robert Allan Hill, dean of Marsh Chapel, serving as wedding coordinator and director of hospitality, and overseeing six office assistants. Sorensen says her positive attitude and gregarious personality have made working at Marsh Chapel a memorable experience.

“She has consistently offered to look over résumés or write letters of recommendation,” Sorensen says. “She is willing and open to talk about ways to continue after graduation… After I leave BU, Heidi will be the supervisor that I will constantly be comparing other supervisors and myself to. Teaching by example, modeling professionalism, and demonstrating ingenuity in problem-solving is a cornerstone of who Heidi is.”

Freimanis-Cordts was traveling with her Baroque music performance group Incendium Novum, so could not be at the ceremony. She was shocked when she heard she had won. “I cried when I read the nomination letter,” she says. “It helped reaffirm that I’m on the right track being a student manager—helping students build their skills, and being a positive presence during their time at BU and in their lives.”

Want to learn how you can nominate a student or a supervisor next year? Find more information here.