Margo Gamache, the Director of Student Services for the Honors College, has won the UMKC Rising Star Award for 2021!
You can watch and applaud as Margo is given the Rising Star Award today, Tuesday April 20, via YouTube! The event will begin at 3:30, and can be accessed here.
The Rising Star Award recognizes a staff member who makes significant contributions to their area and UMKC within the first five years of their service. The winner of this award demonstrates extraordinary commitment through their innovative ideas, passion, and leadership.
“I am honored to have been chosen for the Rising Star Award,” Margo said. “I am so thankful to my co-workers who offered support and suggestions every time I came with a new idea. Our Honors community is special, and I am honored to have the opportunity to nurture it. I look forward to helping UMKC students thrive well into the future!”
Honors College Executive Assistant Alisa Carmichael said she nominated Margo for the award because Margo provides “the best possible university experience for the students she serves. She is always willing to go above and beyond to see that students succeed, both in their present academic work as well as in their preparations for the future. Perhaps even more importantly at this time, Margo has a strong sense of empathy with students and the challenges they face. This has been particularly evident during the pandemic, as she has focused on ways to build a community of caring for our students, working to mitigate the isolation and uncertainty many students have felt during these periods of quarantine.”
Margo joined the Honors College in October 2018 after working at the UMKC School of Medicine for one and one-half years.
“Margo has accomplished truly impressive things during her two years in the Honors College,” said Honors College Dean James McKusick. “She has greatly improved student recruitment, enrollment, and retention, and she has made substantive innovations in our workflow and technology infrastructure.”
Dean Jim noted that Margo has helped increase enrollment by almost 100 students and achieve a record projected enrollment of 500 honors students for Fall 2021.
“Margo also has shown exceptional commitment to the development of ethical and effective leadership skills among the students who hold leadership positions in Honors College student organizations. Seeing that our various student groups needed to develop better interpersonal communication, she volunteered to facilitate a monthly Student Executive Council meeting where all of our student leaders can coordinate plans and develop consistent shared objectives for their respective groups. Under her careful guidance and mentoring, this monthly meeting has become a model for respectful and inclusive student self-governance within the Honors College,” Dean Jim said.
Commenting on Margo’s well-known “straightforward, no-nonsense demeanor,” Honors College Director Gayle Levy said that Margo “gives students confidence. She assists the students who are having difficulties in using the tools they have to resolve their issues and she emboldens those who are doing well to go further, whether that is to complete a senior honors thesis, to study abroad, or to apply for a research opportunity. The mentoring programs she created for the Honor College—Honors College Preceptors, faculty who informally mentor groups of students from varied disciplines—and the OWL (Older, Wiser Learner) program in which students mentor and socially interact with small groups of “joeys” or first-year students, serve as models for the greater UMKC community.”
Margo was born in Iowa City and grew up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She studied Mechanical Engineering and English at Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla and English at the University of Iowa in Iowa City before earning a bachelor’s degree in Communications-Publications with a minor in Marketing at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. Margo has a master’s degree in Leadership in Human Service Administration from Bradley. She lives in Lee’s Summit with her husband and two young sons.
Congratulations to Margo and thanks to her for all that she does for the Honors College.
