Chemistry Teaching Laboratory Staff recognized with CSE Outstanding Service Award
MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (12/31/2025) – The Department of Chemistry Teaching Laboratory Staff was honored with the 2025 College of Science and Engineering (CSE) Outstanding Service Award for a Work Group on December 17th, 2025. The team was recognized for their critical efforts to ensure the brand-new teaching laboratories at Fraser Hall opened in time to welcome the first class of students in September.
The Chemistry Teaching Laboratory Staff team spent almost all of summer 2025 moving, unpacking, organizing, and preparing the state-of-the-art laboratory spaces and related storerooms in the newly-renovated Fraser Hall. “The move into our new Fraser Hall lab facilities has been a year of extraordinary planning, work and a summer of intense execution to be ready for classes to start in Fall 2025,” Chemistry Director of Operations Chuck Tomlinson and Chemistry Department Head Christy Haynes wrote in their nomination of the team. “Our staff raced against time to move into new facilities, install new equipment and change processes while construction continued around them until the very end of August. The troubleshooting of loose ends continues as we face a year of "firsts" in the new building.”
In addition to all the labor that goes on behind the scenes, the laboratory staff also have a huge impact on the student body. “The Chemistry teaching lab staff is the front line of our new building's approach to collaborative learning in a combined lab and classroom format. The quality of the student experience is improved because of the service provided. Faculty decide on new means and methods, but these are the people that make it happen on a daily basis,” Tomlinson and Haynes wrote.
The winners of the CSE Outstanding Service Award for a Work Group are:
- Kylie Adams, Laboratory Service Coordinator
- Diana Mayweather, PhD, Senior Laboratory Services Coordinator
- Joshua Denzer, Principal Laboratory Technician
- Aminata Dotson, Senior Laboratory Technician
- Laura Kundel, Principal Laboratory Technician
- Arceus Pogany, Senior Laboratory Technician
- Patrick Schildt, Laboratory Services Coordinator
The Department of Chemistry would also like to recognize Chellina Angok, Senior Laboratory Technician, as a member of this team. Angok could not be officially included in the award nomination due to previously winning the CSE Outstanding Service Award in 2023.
About the CSE Outstanding Service Awards
Outstanding Service Awards are presented annually by the College of Science and Engineering to recognize and reward exceptional performance and contributions by academic professional and administrative staff, civil service employees, labor-represented staff, as well as work groups.
Each award consists of a one-time monetary award and a certificate of recognition. Individual award winners receive a $1,000 award, and each member of a work group receives $500.