Kenny Sogar, workstation support specialist for College of Natural and Social Sciences, is recognized by UNK Staff Senate with the Employee Achievement Award for August. Sogar has been employed at UNK since 2014.
The Employee Achievement Award recognizes staff for exemplary service and notable contributions to their department and UNK community, embracing an attitude of teamwork, commitment to excellence, contributing to high staff morale and other notable awards or recognition on and off campus.
Comments from those who nominated Sogar:
“Kenny supports over 175 Natural and Social Sciences faculty and staff with 1,885+ devices and growing. NSS has 13 departments and makes up the largest college on the UNK campus. He fosters a cooperative, upbeat work environment with an open door policy for anyone to come and discuss their IT needs/wants/questions. He is always willing to help and provide a sound solution and communicates/responds in a timely manner and with enthusiasm.”
“We were without an IT coordinator for a while, so Kenny inherited a state of mass IT chaos and has worked to bring order, organization and accountability to his area by upgrading classrooms and disposing of surplus equipment. … He designs systems that make workloads more efficient while mentoring student workers on tech support, repair and programming.”
“Kenny has been working with the business office and internal CNSS resources to move the objects on loan project to a more organized, accountable state. With Kenny’s guidance, one student worker is writing a program to assist with our end of the info flow for future inquiries and inventory purposes. He is willing to team with other IT coordinators in brainstorming for solutions and sharing information that makes everyone’s job a ‘work smarter, not harder’ task.”
“Kenny looks for ways to improve his area’s work efficiency, whether it be the layout of the work bench or the setup configuration of IT needs in a classroom. He weighs the pros and cons of the needs and seeks an appropriate fiscal solution that is off times better than the original proposal. He promotes excellence in his own work and his student workers.”
“Kenny is a perpetual teacher and always willing to help people understand, in lay terms, the solution to an IT problem or help mentor his student workers on how to utilize resources to solve their bench work issues or programming roadblock. He provides them the opportunity to succeed beyond a mundane work place situation and challenges them to learn while executing their tasks.”
“Kenny is father to three fine sons and coaches sports. He and his wife, Christina, who is an assistant professor in Social Work, are both involved with Boy Scouts and other family functions in the community. He is an entrepreneur and has had his own successful business in the tech industry. He is highly knowledgeable beyond what his position demands and understands business, customer service and vendor relations. We are lucky to have him, and he has been a great addition the NSS support team.”
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