2019 Q3 Excellence Award Winners
Alyson Coates
Region: Southeast Chapter: Entergy – River Bend
Alyson has really helped out NAYGN as a whole to put together the activity guide for George’s Energy Adventure that all the NAYGN chapters will be using during Nuclear Science Week. She also assisted in creating a new activity called Power Your Town, which can easily been done with elementary age children – not an easy feat. Alyson also has a huge role in communicating and getting events set up with the local schools to participate in community outreach. She is also coaching a middle school robotics team so they can develop a robot that could be used in High Rad Areas. She attends most, if not all girl scout events that we attend for educating the young girls on Nuclear Power as well. Alyson continuously demonstrates our commitment to educate our neighboring community by coming up with great ideas for activities that can be used during class demonstrations, student fairs and in-class coaching.
Savanna Patureau
Region: Southeast Chapter: Entergy – River Bend
Savanna also assisted NAYGN developthe activity guide for George’s Energy Adventure. Savanna also assisted in creating a new activity called Power Your Town. She has also made a huge impact in the communications role and has really help “re-energize” the River Bend chapter!
Jackie Goulding
Region: Midwest Chapter: Exelon
Jackie is regularly active in LaSalle Station NAYGN activities. She is usually one of the first to volunteer to help with events. During our annual Nuclear 101 Teacher’s Workshop on 9/27/19 she was particularly helpful. In setting up for the event she organized the activities to be conducted with the teachers. When the event began we ended up having more teachers show up than we were expecting and she was quick to act to adapt the activities to ensure we had enough materials for each teacher. Then she helped with giving the educational presentation and acted as one of the tour guides for the plant tour. The event was very much a success in large part due to her hard work and dedication.
Emma Paul
Region: Canada Chapter: Bruce Power
Emma Paul has been the chair for NAYGN – Bruce Power prior to and during Q3 of 2019. During her time as chair she has provided leadership to the board, supported the planning and execution of each event and provided committed and enthusiasm. She has increased the amount of events the Board has offered to members and increased turnout to our events. Emma’s enthusiasm was evident when she developed a new professional development event “Lunch and Learns” which allows members to have lunch with an executive or leader in the organization to learn more about how that department or project contributions to the organization. These events have been offered almost monthly and have been well received by the chapter. Informing and educating the younger generation about nuclear science and engineering Emma introduced the idea to our Chapter and lead the visitation of local schools to read “Maria’s Electrical Adventure” to a classroom of children, generating awareness at an early age of what nuclear is and hopefully reading to students that will someday be joining our industry. After each reading a copy of the book was donate to the school, allowing other children to bring it home and read it with their families. Emma has provided avenues to enhance recruiting and retention of young professionals. Through networking Emma has used her relationships with members to leverage their skills and assist with promoting our chapter, calling upon a member who does photography and filming as a hobby to assist us with creating an orientation video. Through our connections in HR, the orientation video will be played on the first day of every onboarding session for new hires, increasing our recruitment and showing the types of events/opportunities we offer. In Q3 Emma arranged a recognition trip for the Board and our active members to attend a Toronto Blue Jays game. The thoughtfulness and appreciation displayed by Emma to arrange an event intended to recognize everyone’s hard work was commendable. The Board and members felt more engaged and used the time together to film clips to use in the orientation video as well as discuss other types of events we could host for next year. Emma has contributed many hours to growing and improving the chapter, contributing these and many other new and fresh ideas. Emma’s leadership and contributions to the Bruce Power chapter have been indicative of a committed, engaged and enthusiastic leader.
Regan Callan
Region: Northeast Chapter: PSEG Hope Creek and Salem
Regan helped create an annual cultural potluck event at PSEG. This event celebrates diversity & inclusion while increasing NAYGN membership engagement. For the potluck, NAYGN members were encouraged to create one of their favorite dishes relating to their heritage or even any dish they really enjoy. From there, attendees vote on their favorite dishes and the top three winners receive prizes. The event yielded a turnout of 24 cooks and 62 attendees far exceeding our chapter’s typical turnout. In addition to coming up and organizing the event, Regan reached out to our corporate office to have a diversity speaker come out and talk during the event. Planning and developing a new event is no small task, let alone drumming up enough interest for such a great turnout. The cultural potluck could not have happened without the exceptional performance from Regan.
Jasmine Ferguson
Region: Northeast Chapter: PSEG Hope Creek and Salem
Jasmine helped create an annual cultural potluck event at PSEG. This event celebrates diversity & inclusion while increasing NAYGN membership engagement. For the potluck, NAYGN members were encouraged to create one of their favorite dishes relating to their heritage or even any dish they really enjoy. From there, attendees vote on their favorite dishes and the top three winners receive prizes. The event yielded a turnout of 24 cooks and 62 attendees far exceeding our chapter’s typical turnout. In addition to coming up and organizing the event, Jasmine reached out to our corporate office to have a diversity speaker come out and talk during the event. Planning and developing a new event is no small task, let alone drumming up enough interest for such a great turnout. The cultural potluck could not have happened without the exceptional performance from Jasmine.
Kathryn Bench
Region: Northeast Chapter: Beaver Valley Power Station
Katie Bench put in an extraordinary amount of work into organizing the first Family Day on site since 1999. Katie was one of the key organizers of Family Day, attending every meeting and coordinating NAYGN’s activities for the day. Because of her efforts, NAYGN coordinated two separate public information events on Family Day. One of these was providing information and tours of the replacement steam generators and reactor vessel head currently stored on our site. This provided a scale of how large components on site are as well as how they work. Along with this, she began the process of putting together a Virtual Tour of the protected area of our site to inform visitors to the site. She helped in all facets of the video, helping with recording video, writing and recording voiceovers, and providing input on editing the final product. In total, roughly 1,200 people attended Family Day on site and were able to take part in these events. Not only did this video reach 1,200 people, it also will be able to be utilized to provide further insights to other members of the public. She did an exceptional job in organizing and coordinating BV NAYGN’s public information initiatives. She displayed true excellence in her devotion to NAYGN.
Matthew Norris
Region: Northeast Chapter: Beaver Valley Power Station
Matt Norris put in an exceptional amount of work into creating and editing a virtual tour of the Beaver Valley Power Station to be utilized as an educational tool for the site. This video was a showcase item at Beaver Valley’s first Family Day event in 20 years. To make this tour, Matt offered up his own personal camera to record video and his own laptop to edit the video with. He even went through the process of learning how to edit videos just for this video. This video provided an introspective look into the various areas in our protected area of the site. It showcased our major components and even took the viewers into containment by way of videos gathered from around the site from refueling outages. Matt went and took video of the spent fuel pool on site to be used for this video in conjunction with materials that we had for our ISFSI pad on site. The editing process took multiple weeks to complete. In all Matt put in upwards of 80 hours of work into the video and I believe he displayed true excellence in his devotion to NAYGN. The video tour that he helped put together will be able to be utilized as an educational tool for the site for many years to come.
Tierra Upshaw
Region: Southeast Chapter: ENERCON – Atlanta
Tierra Upsaw is deserving of an Excellence Award for her work in organizing our first NAYGN Kid-Gineer Day. Tierra organized a team of ENERCON-Atlanta NAYGN personnel to put together an afternoon of activities for ENERCON employees’ children. Activities included a science station, art station, and a reading station where the NAYGN book, Marie’s Electric Adventure, was showcased. Tierra did a great job on this community outreach activity to teach the younger generation about nuclear science and advancing the mission of NAYGN.