10/24/2017

Hello MTASers:

Happy Tuesday . Welcome to this week’s MTAS Mustard.

Before anything else, I want to say THANK YOU ! I am so very pleased to report that as of October 19 ^th (almost two weeks before the deadline), 100% of MTAS staff completed their Securing the Human training. Way to go team MTAS! I sincerely appreciate your efforts on this project.

Let’s talk about another celebration. Did you know that Laura Ogle-Graham has been with MTAS for one year? Happy first anniversary Laura! She joined us on October 17, 2016 and she’s become an integral part of the Research and Innovation Center.

Here’s a reminder for you: Frances sent an email out Friday telling you about an opportunity to order some MTAS apparel. The deadline to respond to her is Thursday. Since the clothing is outerwear, I can say: “don’t be left out in the cold.” Here is a sample photo what the

clothing looks like. If you have questions, please get in touch with her or look for her email dated 10-20-17.

Another reminder is the campus chest campaign. Yes, we are entering the final two weeks and we are still shy of our goals. If you are going to participate, please don’t put it off until the last minute. If you haven’t gotten involved because you don’t have enough information, I can help by sharing this link with you:
https://campuschest.utk.edu/make-a-pledge/

This week I am in Texas at the ICMA conference. I am part of a presentation panel on Tuesday talking about strategic planning for small towns. It is for this reason that I am unable to attend our site visit from the Tennessee Center for Performance Excellence on Tuesday. For those unfamiliar with TNCPE, you might recognize the Baldrige award; the two go hand-in-hand. I look forward to receiving the feedback from the site visit team and learning what someone from the outside thinks we’re doing well and where we might have opportunities for improvement. There is vast potential in that feedback report.

Finally, I want to let you know that Rick Whitehead is moving to the Nashville area. He’ll be starting in the Nashville office on October 30 ^th . Please join me in wishing him an easy move. We’ve never had an assistant director in Nashville (and before Jim, we’d never had a director in Nashville –the historians may correct me if I’m wrong). This arrangement makes a lot of sense for a lot of reasons, but I’ll miss having him next door to me. I’m counting on the Nashville crew to welcome him like you did me when I first started with MTAS.

Okay, that’s it for this week. As you look at the week before you, I leave you with this quote from David Grayson: “We fail far more often by timidity than by over-daring.”

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Sincerely,
Margaret



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