Dear Infrastructure and Sustainability team,
I am particularly excited about the holidays this year. After a two-week bout of COVID-19 and a busy semester, I am ready to rest up and spend time with my family. Perhaps what I look forward to the most is the food that comes with the holidays. One of the holiday traditions I grew up with in Costa Rica was a tamale exchange, similar to a cookie exchange. Each family would make tamales with their own recipes, ingredients and flavor flare, and then they would drop them off to family and friends for their holiday celebrations.
Reminiscing about my culinary experiences around the holidays has gotten me wondering about your traditions. You have the opportunity to share a family recipe in the Infrastructure & Sustainability Mentor Program (ISMP) Gives community cookbook, which will be distributed at our Winter Appreciation Luncheon on January 19, 2023. I look forward to learning about your holiday food traditions and trying some of your recipes. Please make sure you send your submissions in by tomorrow and contact Nancy.Portner@colorado.edu if you have any questions.
Besides enjoying lots of food, I hope you can take time to rest and recharge after a long year. I am in awe of the amazing work our team has done. It’s been nothing short of inspiring to serve as interim vice chancellor these past six months and to really comprehend how much good work you do.
Coming into the new year, I look forward to focusing on employee engagement as part of our DEI action plan. We will start by focusing on goals 1 and 3 of the IDEA plan. We look forward to sharing more information about the program in the spring semester.
We will skip January’s VCIS newsletter, so please make sure you’ve saved the date for our luncheon on January 19, where we will recognize outstanding employees with our I&S annual awards and celebrate a great year with a buffet lunch.
Thank you again for another wonderful semester. You are the heartbeat of our campus and I am infinitely grateful for all the work you’ve done to help our team achieve success.
With gratitude,
Chris Ewing, interim vice chancellor for infrastructure and sustainability