Congratulations to Tyler Brown, Director of Operations for Economic Development, first place winner of the Learning Resources Network’s (LERN) Operations Leader Award, an international award in continuing education. The award is one of six given at LERN’s annual Contract Training and Operations conference recently attended by over 450 professionals in continuing education from five countries.
“The award recognizes an Operations leader who has demonstrated exceptional vision, drive, innovation, and support of direct or indirect staff in 2021,” noted LERN Assistant Vice President, Travette A. Webster. “These awards enhance the quality and involvement in continuing education, an absolutely critical component to individual and community quality of life and prosperity in this century. With more than 100 award nominations every year, gaining an International Award is an outstanding achievement.”
Hired at the College in 2018, Brown hit the ground running. His made immediate impacts as he quickly developed methods for collecting and disseminating data creating monthly, quarterly, semi-annual reports and a process for effectively analyzing data which helped to resolve long-experienced challenges with course scheduling, class locations, and instructor assignments.
Brown developed duties grids and cross-functional training to create deeper bench strength. This proved critical when COVID shutdowns resulted in periods of staff unavailability and shortages. Because of his leadership, hundreds of students and teachers were personally contacted within five days. When the college re-opened, the personal touch communication continued. Also, amid the pandemic, he spearheaded the implementation of Augusoft Lumens registration database.
His team says, “Through all this change, integration and implementation, Tyler maintains a cool head, a sense of humor and a commonsense attitude. Economic Development truly became an integral and valued part of the College with the development of an operations team and the beginning of Brown’s tenure.”
Over the past 18 months, the Economic Development department experienced internal expansion to include the CWI Foundation, Adult Education, and the first Work-Based Learning Center at a taxpayer-funded institution in the state of Idaho. Brown provides support to these areas with graphical user interfaces that make the data easily accessible and understandable for the rest of the department.
“We have a great team of people in Economic Development all working together to help students achieve gainful employment,” said Brown, “and I’m excited to be recognized for the great work we are doing. It’s great to see we are helping to establish CWI as a leader in this field, and I am happy to be a part of it.”