News
Moso Receives Recognition for Dedication
04/28/20
Rosalva Moso often works behind the scenes taking care of tasks that range from spearheading summer camps to assembling furniture to caring for turtles.
Moso, who completed her 10th year at Dalton State in the fall, is this year’s recipient of the Dalton State Foundation’s Beth Burdick Service Excellence Award for her dedication and unending service to the campus community. Due to remote work and learning at Dalton State during the coronavirus pandemic, this year’s award was presented via video presentation by David Elrod, director of the Dalton State Foundation.
The Beth Burdick award was first presented to Burdick in 2005 just before she retired. She was one of the first to be hired at Dalton State, serving the college for 38 years.
Moso is currently the administrative assistant serving the STEM departments in the School of Arts and Sciences.
“As if being administrative assistant to the dean of the largest school in the college, and all that comes with that, were not enough on it’s own, she somehow finds the time to organize summer camps for children on campus, stewards the partnership between the college and Dalton Public Schools to provide summer enrichment experiences for children from the City of Refuge, serves as one of the campus’ well-being champions, pilots new processes for the Office of Purchasing and serves on the planning committee for the annual Design, Engineering and Manufacturing Camp sponsored by the Greater Dalton Chamber of Commerce,” said David Elrod, director of the Dalton State Foundation, who presented the award.
“In the 25th hour of her days, she’s able to tend to our friends in Dalton State’s Turtle Assurance Colony, and she has even adopted a non-endangered specimen named ‘Timmy,’” Elrod said. “The turtle usually lives in her office but she takes him home on long weekends, holidays and even during prolonged closures like we’re in now.”
Nominators noted Moso: “Not only does she do it, but it’s the way she does it – because she cares about the people in the college and the college itself;” “If something needs to be done, it’s done as soon as she hears about it;” and “When she takes on a project, she owns it. She takes complete responsibility for seeing it through to successful completion, no matter how big or small the project. No matter what.”
Moso is so trusted and is such a value to the school she serves as liaison between her school and the administration and contractors of the Sequoya Hall renovation work, Elrod said. She organizes advisory board meetings, prepared Sequoya for renovations to begin working with lab coordinators and faculty on which items to store and which ones to place in temporary lab spaces and she even helped assemble storage cabinets.
“While it is easy for an award like this to lean into a series of superlatives about its recipient, it is the stories that are told about this year’s honoree that get to the essence of why she was chosen,” Elrod said.