With the 2024 Staff Awards Ceremony set to take place on Tuesday, July 16, we thought it apropos to look back at last year's awardees and once again recognize them for their dedication and excellence. This week, we profiled Karlyli Juarez, winner of last year's Student Success Award.
When Karlyli Juarez, Associate Director of Graduate Studies in the College of Humanities
and Social Sciences (CHSS),
learned she had won the 2023 Student Success Award, she was shocked, but not for
the reason you might expect. Nominees for the honor must significantly contribute
to student retention and help foster a student-centered atmosphere, and (here's the
kicker), do so in a manner that goes "above and beyond the expectation of their position."
Employees who regularly work in this high-achieving way would, one expects, anticipate some sort of recognition of their efforts, or, perhaps, even demand it. For Juarez, however, this couldn't be further from the truth. For her, she hardly recognized she was going beyond expectations at all.
"I feel like that's just my personality," she said, "so I didn't see [my work] as being anything extra. Right now, I'm working with graduate programs, but I've worked with undergrad students and freshman orientation sessions. If a current or former student needs help, I'm not going to tell them no. That's how I am."
Juarez is also detail oriented, a trait that helps immensely when reviewing student transcripts, as detective-like attention to what most might overlook has helped students graduate on time, get into graduate school, or matriculate with a minor that they didn't know they were close to obtaining.
And transcripts are just one part of the whole that is the academic industrial machine—Juarez, to her credit (pun most definitely intended), views it as her duty to guide UHD students through the complexities of the educational apparatus: "A lot of our students are first generation, or are transfer students who might have had a bad start to their academic career, and they come back ready to get things together."
So, how does she help? "There's always a solution," Juarez said. "I talk with students and discuss their goals. Then, we come up with a plan."
Speaking of plans, Juarez said that academic advising wasn't in her own plans at all ten years ago. Back then, she was an administrative professional in CHSS and hoped to build a career as a social worker. Then her mentor, Reyna Romero, Director of Advising Services in CHSS, along with others, urged her to consider academic advising, and told her that the profession had much in common with the work that social workers do in the community (it should be noted that Romero nominated Juarez for the staff award).
If the staff award wasn't enough evidence of how much she ended up enjoying the work, consider this: In the time since she started as an advisor, she's been promoted multiple times, and now works with graduate studies as the Associate Director of Graduate Studies in CHSS, a role in which she excels due to her experience, relationships, skills, and dedication.
Of course, things change: Programs add or cut requirements, or new programs are spun up that meet student or market demands, the new Bachelor of Arts in Translation being the latest example in CHSS. What doesn't change, though, is Juarez's love for UHD students, and her faith in the value of her work.
Want to win your own Staff Impact Award for Student Success? Juarez said belief is all you need: in the mission, in higher education, in yourself, and in UHD. And, of course, in our students.
Congratulations again, Karlyli, on your well-deserved award!
Make sure you attend the 2024 Staff Awards Ceremony on Tuesday, July 16. For more info, visit the Staff Awards webpage.