Yoland Spithoven receives Distinguished Service award

We (I) would like to nominate Yolanda Spithoven for the president’s service medal.

For the past decade, Yolanda Spithoven has been instrumental to the functioning and continued persistence of our faculty. But more than that, she has been the glue that holds us together. Yolanda’s official title is “Outreach Coordinator” and in that role she is officially charged with bringing students through the door for the rest of us to educate, nurture, support and make part of the UNB family. In truth, Yolanda does more nurturing, supporting, and creating a family atmosphere than anyone else I know in the Faculty. Others may do more “educating” but she has a firm pedagogical hand.  She is a key organizer and participant in our Intro Fall Camp for incoming students and a co-instructor in our first-year communications courses. Her own course puts our students into the community as mentors, educators and recruiters.

Yolanda provides continuity for students that few other faculties are able to provide. She meets our students when they are still in high school. I am amazed to see her pour over the names of applicants prior to students coming to UNB. She knows them, she knows their parents, she knows their stories. She takes it personally when some of those students choose not to matriculate at UNB. As a key contributor to first year courses, she gets to know the students even more thoroughly. They love her. She has an open door and they come to her with their first year fears and concerns and adjustment issues. She helps them get their first job in their field through her connections to alumni and management of the jobs board. She teaches them cover letter, resume writing and interview skills and she prides herself on getting good, preparatory work for our students in forestry and environmental management fields.

Yolanda advises our students throughout their years with us. She knows our program inside and out and the students trust her. They trust that with her knowledge of their own strengths and abilities and her knowledge of the programme, she can help them construct a schedule that will most help them succeed.

Yolanda’s creativity in recruiting knows no bounds. She has become actively involved in the Canadian Woodland Forum’s Atlantic Teachers Tour, which puts her in direct contact with high school science teachers across the region. She is involved in Envirothon for the same reason. Last year she brought 25 high school science teachers into our classrooms and into our building to see what goes on here. As well, she tirelessly travels to schools all across the Maritimes to give presentations to students and to talk to them one-on-one about our offerings. She is always thinking of new ways to reach out to potential students.

Yolanda’s dedication and loyalty to our Faculty is astounding. She attends all our alumni events and in doing so expands her own vast network (all in the interest of helping our undergrads once they graduate). She is only paid for a fraction of the hours that she logs and our administrators are continually nagging her to take her earned vacation time. But Yolanda has kept plugging away at her normal breakneck pace.

In short, Yolanda is our ambassador. She went to the funeral of a student from Nova Scotia who tragically passed away in a freak accident this summer. She is the person that people come back to see once they have graduated. I hear about weddings and the births of babies of students I had 5 or 8 years ago from Yolanda because she is the person within our Faculty with whom our alumni most want to share these joys.

It is somewhat ironic that this woman, who has no formal training in forestry or natural science, is the heart and soul of our Faculty. She is not only a “den mother” to our students, but she lights up the lives of many of her co-workers. I can’t imagine our Faculty without her. Her commitment to UNB is remarkable and she has made the UNB experience an excellent one for scores of students. I am convinced that her recruiting efforts have kept us afloat as a Faculty in recent years and the greater the challenge seems to be, the harder she tries.

~ Tom Beckley