Do you work with or know someone who goes above and beyond what’s expected of them and is doing an exceptional job at work? Then nominate them for one of the Vice-Chancellor’s Awards for Professional Staff!

The 2022 Vice-Chancellor’s Excellence Awards for Professional Staff are now open for nominations, giving you a chance to acknowledge those colleagues (individuals or teams) who do great things in the areas of:

• Outstanding service
• Collaboration, connection and belonging
• Innovation and process improvement
• Diversity and inclusion
• Leadership excellence
• Agility award (for pandemic response)

This year Macquarie has added a once-off Agility Award for Pandemic Response to recognise the exceptional and innovative/unique efforts of an individual and/or a team to overcome the challenges our communities, stakeholders, staff and/or students have faced since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Award recipients (individual staff member or a team) for each category are awarded a $4000 grant to be spent on professional development for the individual or team (eg. course, conference, accreditation).

“Professional staff are an integral part of the University’s ongoing success. It is important that exceptional performance is appropriately recognised and rewarded,” says Vice-Chancellor Professor S Bruce Dowton.

“These last two years with Covid-19 have been extraordinarily tough and this is a great opportunity to recognise those staff who have gone above and beyond their normal course of duty.”

Nominations are open until 11.59pm on Friday 5 August

In 2019, Penny Huisman, now Head of Student Wellbeing, won an award for Collaboration and Connection for her role leading the Respect.Now.Always project.

“I used my grant to attend training, looking at good practice in relation to responding to bullying, harassment, sexual harassment and sexual assault,” says Penny.

Know someone like Penny whom you’d like to recognise? Visit the Awards webpage to learn more about the categories, eligibility criteria and nomination process.