Staff Award for Excellence - Samantha Gibbons

Samantha Gibbons with husband Tyler

Research Administration Manager - Cardiovascular Medicine

Nominator, Robert Keast -  "Sam has a deep commitment to excellence, teamwork, and always aims to create a supportive environment. She is hard-working, collaborative, and a strong communicator. Sam continues to demonstrate an outstanding knowledge of research administration and natural leadership skills." 

Work Performance

Sam joined the Cardiovascular Medicine in June 2019 as a Research Administrator, Manager. This was a newly created position for the 80 research faculty in the division. To give you an idea of the scope of work the division submitted 169 proposals to external sponsors last fiscal year and received over $21 million dollars in sponsored research funding. Sam quickly demonstrated an outstanding knowledge of research administration and natural leadership skills and set immediately to work on ways to improve pre-award service to our faculty and to build a positive team environment with her staff.

As the COVID pandemic began, Sam led her team in restructuring their workflow to allow for fully remote work while maintaining a high level of customer service and technical quality. This was undertaken not only to protect the health and well-being of her team, but also as an opportunity to create a more enjoyable work environment by eliminating the need for daily commuting.

Sam has a deep commitment to excellence, teamwork, and always aims to create a supportive environment. She is hard-working, collaborative, and a strong communicator. She has gone out of her way, in her after-hours time, to help high level faculty and other faculty members meet deadlines, working through countless administrative challenges, in a professional and cheerful way. She truly does go "over and above” and in so doing is surely deserving of the recognition of this award.

Leadership

When Sam first started in the division she immediately took on managing the CVM T32 training grant that has been active for 25 years and has worked tirelessly on maintaining its integrity. Sam quickly set to work and improved the pre-award service to our faculty and has built a positive team environment with her staff. Sam is a natural born leader, she leads by example, modeling dignity and professionalism even under pressure situations.
 
Sam encourages her team to make time for trainings and webinars that will elevate the way everyone supports faculty, and as a role model, she attends those events as well. She constantly encourages her team to look at the bigger picture, to not view pre-award as a silo; but to constantly be thinking of what the team can do better on the pre-award side to make for a smoother transition to post-award down the line. Upon her arrival to CVM, she recommended that each research faculty is assigned a dedicated pre- and post-award contact as their go-to person for all research administration needs. This broke down silos further, as it improved communication between all 3 teams; faculty, pre-award, and post-award.

Customer Service

Sam is unselfish with her time, sharing her talents and knowledge with her staff, allowing them to grow in their careers. She meets weekly with her team and meets individually monthly to allow for strategic planning. Sam allows for an open discussion, sharing strengths and provides guidance on how to improve weakness by encouraging courses through UM. She is a champion for her staff and they have grown and developed because of her leadership and commitment to their careers.

With such a large research portfolio Sam works with many research offices both within the University as well as outside sponsors. Team building is just one key to her success. We have two very large contracts with the Ann Arbor VA, which have been managed by Michigan Medicine for over ten years. In the middle of important complex contract negotiations, the University of Michigan made the corporate decision to have these contracts managed by ORSP. Sam was thrust into a central position as interface between the Division, the Department, Michigan Medicine, ORSP, and the federal government (Department of Veterans Affairs). Sam again, never missed a beat. She was informed, learned the new system, kept me and others informed, and provided all materials timely so we met all VA deadlines. This was an enormous and really uncharted administrative lift, as it will set the tone for contracts between 6 other departments and the VA through ORSP (we had the "luck") of being first out of the gate to start this new University/VA interaction. I am sure other departments and contracts will now follow the template we have established, with the help of a small team of outstanding administrators including Sam.

Process Improvement

Sam has created supportive environment for the pre-award staff that includes a better work/life balance. She has set work boundaries and still be able to maintain service excellence. Sam is calm, circumspect, and generous in her support of her staff. She leads by example, modeling dignity and professionalism even under pressure situations. Sam is unselfish with her time, sharing her talents and knowledge with her staff, allowing them to grow in their careers. We are in good hands with Sam mentoring skills in the development of the next generation of research administrators.