Political Science and A&S Dean’s Office

Outstanding Performance Award

Nominated by Rodger Payne
Chair of Political Science

Bridget Burke
Lead Fiscal Officer, College of Arts & Sciences

“Ms. Jessica Kidd, the Unit Business Manager in Political Science, has long been responsible for a wide range of duties. She creates the budget and manages the monthly budgets. She processes payroll and manages student scholarships. She evaluates a wide range of spending requests (including faculty travel) and assigns the spending to particular accounts. Until this most recent year, she compiled the professional documentation for annual work plans, merit, pretenure, tenure, and promotion cases for the faculty. She is effectively the office manager and supervises a number of staff members. Until 2017, Jessica also completed the first draft of the course schedule and assigns departmentally-controlled rooms.” ― Rodger Payne, Chair

“Jessica is simply outstanding… She completes her work in a timely manner, maintains a professional (even cheerful!) demeanor, and is greatly appreciated by everyone. She is the most indispensable employee in the main office.”

“Jessica often anticipates problems before they develop. She knows the budget very well and thus has a great idea about spending limits and revenue needs (from distance education, primarily). She keeps abreast of new University policies and quickly applies them to her job. If she knows that particular faculty might be needed for a particular task, she has typically investigated their schedules, determined potential conflicts, and thought of alternative possibilities. I consider Jessica an essential sounding board for departmental planning and she has served this role splendidly.”

“Frankly, I fear the day Jessica departs Political Science for a position in the University that will more fully exploit her leadership potential. …She is respected by coworkers, thinks about current and future problems, learns from (rare) mistakes, and follows through on commitments. She inspires other staff to complete even undesirable tasks because she is always willing to pitch in, even if it that requires making a few photocopies, carrying food and drinks to an event in the building, or delaying a lunch period.”

“Jessica also has a strong working relationship with other Unit Business Managers. While she sometimes calls upon a colleague for advice about solving a particular puzzle related to her job, she is far more often the person who gets called by others to help solve their problems. She really knows university policies and procedures, particularly in regard to finance and budgeting.”

“Jessica streamlined the faculty merit process for A&S.” — Bridget Burke, LFO

“Each of the 26 departments in A&S has different personnel policies on how faculty merit is calculated and distributed. The policies range from simple to perplexing. Jessica developed a spreadsheet that linked directly to the personnel policies of each department. The spreadsheet allowed for us to enter the merit score into the spreadsheet and the merit amount was calculated. This oversimplified explanation took several weeks to develop and extensive testing. Her work allowed for transparency with the departments and permitted the development of a better process of notifying faculty of their new salaries.

Jessica's help and dedication to the A&S Faculty Merit project allowed us to process our merit in a timely manner with confidence. …Faculty merit in the previous year was a complete disaster due to incorrect formulas, changes upon changes, human error, etc. Having Jessica's attention to detail, expertise and work integrity allowed us to start to build back the creditability and reputation of the A&S Budget Office.