Traci Luft, who works for Informational Technology (IT), as a financial specialist senior, at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, has been named the recipient of the September 2018 STAR Award.

She was nominated by Mary Hale, telecommunications specialist for IT.

Luft’s nomination follows:

“During her employment, she has demonstrated a strong commitment to excellence by consistently going beyond expectations for service, process transparency and accountability. In her support role of financial specialist senior, she has been instrumental in the delivery of precision on accounting, procurement, software licensing and human resource support beyond our division.

“As Informational Technology (IT) centralization took place a few years ago, her role as procurement coordinator went from IT only, to serving a critical role to the success of all UW Oshkosh IT projects and service portfolio. Traci delivered on the coordination and execution of the following projects:

• Centralization and coordination of all student support budget allocations for IT campuswide. The coordination and paperwork for hundreds of students supporting various departments required precision and transparency. 
• Centralization of all software licensing and purchasing for all IT related efforts campuswide.
• Monitoring of budgets for all IT HR resources as we face sustained budget reductions.
• The centralization, monitoring, billing and reporting of all managed print services, creating accountability for print consumption while improving printer support campuswide.
• Working with Purchasing on a new process for all software purchases and renewals campuswide
• Coordination and delivery of all IT-related financial reporting to the CIO and IT leadership staff.

“UW Oshkosh has gone through a great deal of change regarding policy, procedures and procurement controls for all departments. Traci has played a critical role in delivering new information, helping departmental clients through a new realigned procurement process, delivering information regarding new expectations for software licensing, handling of all IT-related procurement efforts, delivering and reporting on managed print services, coordinating all travel reimbursement procedures and delivering on internal customer communication, etc.

“As other departments experienced staff turnover and capacity reductions, Traci took on the responsibility to handle all large IT project procurement and find new ways to handle procurement workflows through the use of our IT Helpdesk software.

“While some of these duties seemed as part of her job and operational in nature, the expected workload and changes in scope have been dramatic. We believe she deserves recognition for her long-term contributions and for her dedication to process improvement at UW Oshkosh.”