This week’s COVID Superstar is Laboratory Assistant Brenda Beatty in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry. While Brenda has always worked tirelessly in lab prep and cleanup, she has been indispensable in the time of COVID. This year there have been many changes to the ordinary structure of the laboratory experiments, and each student in a lab section has to have their own set of supplies. This has meant a lot of changes for Brenda, but she has handled it beautifully. She has been proactive and communicative at all times, as well as upbeat and always looking on the bright side.
In preparation for the semester the department also needed to video record approximately 40 laboratory experiments for our C121, C125, and C126 courses in about five weeks. As a result the department scheduled two and sometimes three experiments most days, and Brenda was responsible for preparing the solutions and setting out a cart with every possible piece of glassware or equipment needed to record each experiment. This was no small feat! We’re used to thinking on a larger scale of running a lab with 20 students. Downsizing and re-labeling and re-supplying cleaned glassware took at tremendous amount of time and effort.
To nominate a COVID Superstar go to https://administration.iusb.edu/human-resources/index.html. (Firefox browser is recommended for this MACH form).