Pharmacy Hosts Surprise Party For Two UMB Employees of the Month

Two School of Pharmacy employees earn University distinction for excellence, commitment, and going above and beyond.

By Chris Zang
December 13, 2013

Be careful the next time you are invited to attend a UMB Employee of the Month presentation for someone else. You might be the guest of honor!

That’s what Tamara Borisevich and Malissa Carroll discovered when the two School of Pharmacy staff members were invited to a conference room next to the Dean’s Office on Dec. 12.

“I was told Malissa was being honored,” said Borisevich, who manages accounts in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences (PSC) and is UMB’s Employee of the Month for July.

“Becky [Ceraul] said to cover this, that we needed a story on Tamara,” said Carroll, writer-web content producer at the School. In fact, Carroll had to put down her notepad, where she was scrawling notes, when she was announced as UMB’s October Employee of the Month by Natalie D. Eddington, PhD, FAAPS, FCP, dean of the School of Pharmacy, who was filling in as host for President Perman.

It all made for a rollicking good time as the pharmacy colleagues who crowded into the conference room laughed and smiled after pulling one over on Borisevich and Carroll.

“You should have told me,” Borisevich chided PSC chair Andrew Coop, PhD, after the ceremony. “I almost passed out when the dean said my name.” She was wearing a tiara made for the “July queen” by colleague Nicole Derr.

Borisevich was nominated for juggling the accounts of multiple faculty members, taking care of travel requests, reimbursements, and handling purchasing. She handles these tasks “with extreme efficiency and patience,” the nomination said, often figuring out what is needed and then going directly to faculty. She also works with graduate students and postdoctoral fellows and assists their transition to the business side of research in PSC.

Alexander MacKerell Jr., PhD, Grollman-Glick Professor in PSC, closed Borisevich’s nomination by saying, “She’s a team player who has shown great dedication to improving herself and those around her.”

Asked what the award meant to her, Borisevich smiled and said, “I’m very pleased and surprised. It is nice to have your work recognized in this way.” Also the winner of a previous School of Pharmacy Spirit Award, Borisevich said she is blessed to work with “such a great department and School. It’s amazing the research that the people do here.”

Carroll was nominated by Coop and Angela Wilks, PhD, professor and vice chair of research in PSC, who said “Malissa may have been at the School of Pharmacy for only 18 months, but in that time she has made incredible contributions to the marketing and communications mission of the School.”

They said Carroll played a leading role during the redesign of the School’s website, assisting in migrating 5,000 pages of content from the old website to the new, while meeting with faculty and staff from the School’s various units to determine web content needs. “She has also shown herself to be invaluable in the writing of content for the website,” the nominators said.

Carroll, more comfortable asking questions than answering them, said she was stunned to be named October Employee of the Month. “I don’t expect attention for the things I do. I’m perfectly happy being behind the scenes. I never considered myself even in the running for this award so yes, I was totally shocked.”

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