Susan May, Winner of CNS Staff Excellence Award

Susan May has been a part of the Charles A. Dana Center for over 20 years. We are thrilled to see Susan honored by The University of Texas at Austin’s College of Natural Sciences with a 2019 Staff Excellence Award and the Rom Rhome Endowment Staff Recognition Award.

The CNS Staff Excellence and Rom Rhome Awards are presented to exceptional staff who exhibit outstanding dedication, competence, and resourcefulness.

Susan has worked with the Charles A. Dana Center in a variety of roles—research associate, education consultant, course program specialist, senior program coordinator—focused on supporting effective mathematics instruction for students locally, statewide, nationally, and those whose parents serve abroad in the military.

Susan is universally admired by anyone fortunate enough to work directly with her. She is the ultimate team player and thought partner with an inspiring generosity of spirit, time, and talent. No question is stupid and no problem unsolvable. She is often trusted to lead large, long-term projects under the direction of her manager and in collaboration with outside organizations and funders to further the mission of The University of Texas and the Dana Center. All this while raising triplets!

“Susan is an invaluable team member at the Dana Center, and her contributions are myriad.  The threads that bind them all, though, are her deep commitment to providing the highest quality instructional resources to the students most in need, and her loyalty and devotion to those with whom she works each day. She is also remarkably creative in creating cutting edge ways of engaging students in that content. Whether through new animations that students can manipulate, or full simulations they can run to understand problem situations, Susan’s ideas – and ability to collaborate with others to make them real – are profound. Always ready to support a co-worker, she has mentored numerous young staff over the years and challenged others to always do their best work- including me.”
Doug Sovde
Dana Center
Director, K-12 Strategy, Policy, and Services

“Susan’s respectful demeanor and dedication to the field are admired, but most of all I am in awe of how composed and focused she stays in the face of challenges. Our work is on the cutting edge, and that means we are regularly tested with unknowns and new problems. Susan is unflappable! She is patient and a very persistent problem-solver. She is creative and deeply considers new approaches and brainstorms ideas. She is flexible and adaptable in her work to ensure success of a project. She is not easily flustered but is centered and confident in the ability to overcome. She is truly an inspiration to the staff at the Center, our partners, and to me.”
Katey Arrington
Dana Center
Manager, K-12 Services

“Susan never hesitates to put in extra effort for a better student outcome. For instance, part of my team's role at Agile Mind is to provide technical expertise on utilizing the interactive, online medium to its best potential. Susan's ideas for using visualization to teach math, and for allowing students to interact with visual representations, enable my team to push our technology tools to provide more for students. Susan engages with us continually to learn more about what technology can provide, and she quickly comes up with ideas for putting it to use to increase student learning. This kind of work is harder than traditional lesson development, but she embraces it. Teachers rate animations as the most helpful part of Agile Mind, and we've developed some of our most interactive and visually instructive animations with Susan.” 
Debbie Zimmerman
Agile Mind
Director of Instructional Design and Production

Join the Dana Center in congratulating Susan May on this honor!