A&S Dean’s Office

Outstanding Performance Award

Nominated by Lindsey Brown Ronay
A&S Dean’s Office

Ms. Melissa Moody’s primary job duties as PR and Publications Coordinator are the creation and coordination of written content for print, e-newsletters and the A&S website. She also creates and coordinates photographic and graphic design elements as they relate to print, web and other promotional media. Specifically, she handles the content creation, editing and distribution of our new print biannual (January and July/August) print newsletter – The Thinker. Each issue is distributed to approximately 7,000 people in print and approximately 19,000 people via mail. She also creates and curates the content for two additional e-Thinkers that go out in March and November. She is almost solely responsible for the creation and distribution of the Monday Memo, the Dean's weekly internal e-newsletter. This requires an ability to juggle, aggregate, standardize and format a great deal of submitted information in a short period of time.

“Melissa's curiosity, creativity, and skill serve students and university colleagues by telling their story. She serves the general public and our university community by showing them the hidden gems in their midst. Feedback we have received from all of our constituencies regarding The Thinker has indicated that reading it has made them proud to be a part of the A&S community.”

“Melissa’s job is, in large part, to showcase the work of our A&S students and colleagues. The easiest way to do this would be cover the usual suspects - honors students and the A&S faculty rock stars, i.e. the most outgoing or outrageous faculty who everyone already knows. Melissa has expressly stated that she doesn't want to go that route. She wants to sing the unsung. So she digs around, looking for those who aren't just high achievers or media darlings, but those who have unique and compelling stories that need telling. She gets to know her subjects and is able to able to find an angle on the person(s) and/or project(s) that is unique and meaningful.”

“Not only are Melissa's creative skills and instincts some of the best I have seen at my over 15 years at UofL, she is extremely organized. Melissa process is to submit a content plan or proposal and time line for any given project, tweak with feedback and then execute. And she unfailingly puts out a fantastic product that usually requires surface editing only. Very rarely can I improve upon her work. She keeps time lines, spreadsheets, and meticulous project plans and editorial calendars. Not surprisingly, she can crank out a status report for any given project with hardly any notice.”

“Melissa believes in the value of higher education and research, in particular, the value of education and research in the liberal arts and sciences. Her enthusiasm for the subject matter shows in her writing and the lengths to which she goes to track down just the right story, just the right photo, just the right quote. Emails, phone calls, visits to faculty's classrooms and offices. She is relentless but kind in her pursuit to showcase A&S excellence. The attention she has paid to our A&S community has improved morale within the College, raised the visibility of the College at the University-level and in the community-at-large, and helped to increase our annual fund numbers for fiscal year 2017.”

“What can I say other than Melissa is every supervisor's dream employee. She is smart, reliable, consistently upbeat, creative, organized, and a highly skilled writer with a number of visual talents as well. She has great instincts, takes initiative, and is always motivated to make the next thing better than the last. In my experience, it is not often that one runs into people with this magic combination of creativity, practical ability, work ethic, and attitude.