Of the many “official” Emory ceremonies that I am invited to participate in, I have a clear favorite. It is the Employee of Distinction Award ceremony, where between 10 and 15 Emory University employees are recognized annually for outstanding contributions to the Emory community. I don’t get to go every year, but this year OIT was fortunate to have Wayne Morse (Academic Technology Services) selected for this campus-wide honor, an honor for which I had nominated Wayne.
For those of you who don’t know Wayne, you can find him in the Woodruff Library in Emory’s Center for Interactive Teaching (ECIT). Faculty know it by this acronym, but those who are really in the know call it by its favored name, “Wayne’s World.” And that name is appropriate in so many ways. “Wayne’s World” is the place to go (and he is the person to see) to try out different technologies in teaching. It is like a test kitchen, where faculty can safely try different techniques and play with different ingredients, all the while being supported by Wayne and his Academic Technology Services colleagues in ECIT, Chris Fearrington and Chase Lovelette.
In writing Wayne’s nomination, I recognized Wayne as “the quiet and confident lead for ECIT, shaping the way Emory learns about technology and how and when to incorporate it into coursework.” But that hardly captures all of Wayne’s contributions. To get a sense of that, you need to go way back in time to Candler Library when ECIT was “WorldClass,” a facility in a shabby basement room where there was a steam crack that belched noxious fumes and caused such an issue with humidity that mushrooms actually grew in the room. I suspect if we had time to look through the photo archives of the division, someone like Marisa Benson (PMO) or Steve Lamb (Academic Technology Services) could provide proof-positive fungal photo evidence!
Wayne is so self-effacing that he would be the first to credit his immediate colleagues, and then many others, for the contributions that they have made to make ECIT a success. He would be both generous and right to acknowledge the many who have contributed to the effort. However, it is the privilege of the Employee of Distinction ceremony that only one person gets to stand up, and in this case, how fitting it was that Wayne took a bow for all he has invested to make his facility the standout experience that it has become across the campus.
The Employee of Distinction ceremony is presided over by President Wagner, who presents each honoree with a trophy and a certificate recognizing their accomplishments. In addition, each employee recipient receives a check for $1,000 to mark the occasion. In his remarks this year, Wagner called the Employees of Distinction “heroes” for going so far beyond the call of duty in their contribution to the community. Wayne Morse is no exception, shaping the quality of teaching anywhere an Emory graduate student lands and begins their career. It is an exceptional contribution and one which I hope you will join me in celebrating anytime you run into Wayne and think about what he has contributed to the classrooms of tomorrow.
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