About the Award
The Teresa Harris Guthrie Award is given annually to an outstanding student employee who has made a positive impact on the Division of Development & Alumni Relations at UGA through the demonstration of one or more DAR SIC’Em values: Servant Leadership, Innovation, and Commitment. The winner will receive a framed certificate and $500 cash prize funded by the Teresa Harris Guthrie Memorial Fund.
The award was established in memory of former DAR employee Teresa Harris Guthrie. Her smile, outgoing personality, and endless positive attitude made Teresa a joy and a comfort to be near. Her co-workers, family and friends raised money to create this award in memory of her dedication and mentorship to the students who worked with her.
Eligibility
Any undergraduate student enrolled at UGA and employed by DAR is eligible. DAR supervisors submit nominations in response to a call issued each spring.
Please note: graduate students, including graduate assistantships, research or teaching assistants, as well as volunteers, are not eligible. Students employed by schools, colleges or units are not eligible.
Nomination Process
Once the call for nominations is issued, supervisors may submit nominations via a Qualtrics form. Every part of the nomination form must be completed to be considered. An awards committee will score nominations on a 0-30 point scale based on the strength of nomination, including but not limited to:
Value: Full description of how the student worker demonstrated the value
Action: Detailed narrative of the student worker’s actions
Impact & Scope: The impact and scope of student worker’s actions
About this Year’s Winner
“Tanvi Pucha is a shining example of everything that makes the University of Georgia great. After growing up in the Atlanta Metro area, she came to UGA on the pre-med track and joined the Honor’s college. Excellence is and always has been a standard for Tanvi and she often exceeds that by maintaining a high GPA while juggling numerous extracurricular activities and peer leadership roles each semester. In Aug. 2022, she added ‘student worker’ to her already impressive resume by joining the Career Center as a Team Assistant. The Team Assistant role is what I would consider a rather stereotypical internship role. We fund this position to support the ‘other duties as assigned’ that our full-time team members prefer to delegate. Historically, this has included a variable list of tasks such as social media content creation, data cleaning, paper printing and lamination, event help, and more behind-the-scenes work. Throughout this year, though, Tanvi has exhibited an immense commitment to student support initiatives and has elevated the position to new heights by making it her own.
“Despite this being her first paid job experience, Tanvi has proven herself to be a natural leader and has grown tremendously during her time here. Because of her personal experience as a pre-med student, Tanvi decided to join our internal pre-health committee and worked closely with our Career Consultant team in producing, editing and finalizing our Pre-Health eLC modules that are now available for the entire UGA student population to access. Presently, there are 368 students that have engaged with the course. Tanvi’s perspective in compiling this information was invaluable, as she has been navigating the medical school preparation process firsthand. Her commitment to perfecting every student- and staff-facing resource, eLC webpage, and document available for download was integral in getting this resource rolled out early this spring rather than in the summer or next fall.
“Tanvi has a personal mission to serve and demystify the navigation of professional school preparation. She has also made a significant effort in connecting and collaborating with the entire Career Center staff to build relationships and provide intentional support with our individual projects and initiatives. With this, Tanvi has served as a guest speaker for clubs and student groups alongside our Career Consultant team members to share her personal perspective about how both the Career Center and other units on campus can provide student support to pre-health students in particular. Again, these tasks were not previously a component of the Team Assistant role, but Tanvi’s commitment to her fellow students and the mission of the UGA Career Center has been impossible to ignore and very exciting to cultivate as a supervisor. As her role requires, she is still printing paper, making Canvas and organizing spreadsheets for our staff on the day-to-day, but she never stops there. Tanvi is always looking for ways to develop herself professionally while supporting her peers and aiming to expand the reach, depth, and breadth of our student-facing services.
“Anyone at the Career Center, full-time staff and student workers alike, would tell you that Tanvi’s work-ethic and positive attitude embodies the legacy that Teresa Harris Guthrie has left behind. I think the most exciting example of Tanvi’s commitment to DAR and the Career Center is that she is being promoted to Career Development Intern for the upcoming 23-24 academic year. In this role, Tanvi will work directly alongside her fellow UGA students by serving as a lead presenter for large group presentations, supporting our Arch Ready Professionalism Certificate program and staffing our daily drop-in hours to consult with students on various career development topics. Being that she is already familiar with our office, she will also take on a peer leadership role on the team by leading small group sessions and helping her new teammates get acclimated to the Career Center during summer training.
“We are very fortunate to have Tanvi as a member of our team, and we look forward to seeing how her commitment to our office, UGA students, and the University at large will continue to evolve and grow our student-facing initiatives over the next academic year.” — nominator and Tanvi’s supervisor, Brionna Johnson
