CoS Excellence Award: Scott Dreisbach
Mr. Scott Dreisbach has been selected as the College of Science Excellence Awardee for CBC!
He was presented with this award and honored at the CoSSAC Staff Awards Luncheon on April 12, 2023.
Here is an excerpt from Dr. Craig Aspinwall's nomination letter:
Scott joined UA in 1999 and since then has proven to be an invaluable member of the department who routinely goes beyond the normal job description to get things done.
In Scott’s normal job operations, he serves as the building manager for FIVE building distributed over a relatively large range of the main campus. In this role, he is the point person for more than 350 CBC personnel (faculty, staff and graduate students), as well as the 5,000+ students who are enrolled in our courses each semester, and works diligently to ensure that all their requests and needs are met. These range from issues with locks, HVAC, building entry, etc., most of which he coordinates with other units in FM and across campus. Scott also serves as the key point of information distribution from those sources to minimize the effects of upcoming issues on our research and teaching infrastructure. Because of relationships that Scott has built inside and outside of the department, he has proven a master of navigating and balancing the needs of the department versus the needs of the institution.
Though Scott is fully engaged in his current job, he took on the added responsibility of coordinating our move out of the Chemistry building so that the renovation project could begin. This was a monumental undertaking that required the relocation of eight research groups, with large amounts of equipment, supplies and personnel, as well as the vast majority of the departmental operations and student support activities in the department. All told almost 70 people needed to be moved to new spaces to enable the renovation to proceed, and they needed to have a minimal loss of productivity related to complex research activities. This was exacerbated by the fact that after long project delays, we were notified in January 2021 that the renovation would be begin in May 2021, providing only four months to move the remaining occupants in the building. Scott Dreisbach is almost single handedly responsible for our ability to meet these deadlines. He used his skills in project management, from overseeing several renovation and design projects in the department, the relationships he had previously built and good, old-fashioned elbow grease to ensure that we met our deadlines. I cannot overemphasize how much work this was, on top of Scott’s “day job”, yet he readily took on this challenge and saw it through in a way that I honestly did not think would be possible.
Over the years, I have talked to numerous individuals, from groups ranging from Project Design and Construction to Facilities Management to Research Laboratory Safety Services and many in between. They all know Scott as a reliable partner who will go above and beyond to ensure the mission of the institution is being served in the most straightforward, practical manner possible.
Nomination by Dr. Craig Aspinwall with favorable support by Dr. Brooke Massani.
Thank you to all the nominators and nominees who participated in this excellent staff opportunity. We have a truly amazing staff.
-CBC Staff Awards Committee