2025 CSE Outstanding Service Award Winners

Congratulations to Brett Rosiejka, Lab Manager and Staff Scientist, from the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics.

Brett has led several major projects that have greatly improved the department’s teaching labs. In Aeromechanics Lab (AEM 4602W), a senior-level experimental methods course, he directed a full overhaul of the systems lab by developing a new lab using drones. He worked with faculty closely to introduce new guidance, navigation, and control experiments that allow students to design and fly autopilots for drones. Brett also invested significant time and effort in revamping and modernizing wind tunnel experiments introduced in Flight, Dynamics, and Control (AEM 4303W) earlier this year. He played a key role in helping faculty revise the laboratory content of the course that uses the wind tunnels, including developing new experiments with full aircraft models such as the cirrus SR22. 

Other 2025 P&A nominees:

• Melanie Burns, Department of Mechanical Engineering
• Bo Connelly, Department of Biomedical Engineering
• Katherine Dowd, School of Mathematics
• Meagan Hagerty, Department of Biomedical Engineering
• Heather Steen, Department of Chemistry
• Lisa Wissbaum, Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science

Congratulations to Ed Stash, Operations and Project Manager for CSE Student Services.

Ed has made extraordinary contributions to the College of Science and Engineering through his leadership, organization, and unwavering commitment to excellence. One of his most significant accomplishments was coordinating and executing the spring commencement ceremony—a massive undertaking that celebrated approximately 1,400 graduates and welcomed nearly 4,000 guests. Ed managed every facet of the event with precision and care, from overseeing student registrations and regalia to coordinating with Mariucci Arena staff, security teams, speakers, and faculty participants. He also worked closely with departments to align their individual celebrations with the larger college ceremony, ensuring every student’s milestone was recognized with professionalism and joy.

Other 2025 Civil Service nominees include:

• Dan Conrad, Minnesota Geological Survey
• Mollie Dunlap, Department of Chemistry
• Ben Erickson, St. Anthony Falls Laboratory
• Alison Lund, Department of Biomedical Engineering
• Jeanine Maiden, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
• Max Manzo, School of Mathematics
• Karon Mooney, Department of Mechanical Engineering
• Mary Nissen, Department of Computer Science and Engineering
• Marlena Yang, Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Congratulations to Kylie Adams, Josh Denzer, Aminata Dotson, Laura Kundel, Diana Mayweather, Arceus Pogany, Patrick Schildt, Chemistry Teaching Lab Work Group. 

The move into the 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. The physical move of lab contents alone is worthy of recognition. Everything the CHEM teaching lab staff did over the past year furthers the entire teaching mission for large introductory chemistry lab courses. Those courses are taken by nearly 5,000 students per year, from 120 different majors in multiple colleges across the University of Minnesota. The staff was still operating our same courses in 2024-2025 and Summer 2025 in Smith Hall while also packing a preparing for the summer move to Fraser Hall. In addition to serving the enrolled students, the CHEM teaching lab staff met the needs of faculty, instructors and teaching assistants as they prepared to do their jobs in a new location. The final weeks of August were quite uncertain as finishing work continued, which left very little margin for error. The team's experience, collaboration and creative problem-solving made the difference on a daily basis.

Other work groups nominated were:

• CS&E Graduate Affairs Work Group: Miranda Nelson, Joseph Nieszner, Allison Small

• Dean’s Office, CSE-IT, and CEMS Work Group: Jay Delaney, Karen Jung, and Dan McDonald.