Since 2007, EHS has been honoring staff members with the EHS Employee of the Year Award as well as the EHS Excellence Award, now the Dariusz Czarnota Award of Excellence. These awards were created to recognize employees for their exceptional work ethic and dedication to EHS. The 2022 award recipients were recognized at an EHS staff meeting on March 24th. See a list of past EHS award winners.
Employee of the Year
Liz DeChello
Liz is a hardworking, reliable, and consistent staff member who brings an enthusiasm for her work and a willingness to take on new tasks to help the department. Her kindness often helps to brighten the office, especially during difficult or stressful times. While Liz is typically working behind the scenes, her work has a deep-reaching impact on the daily functioning of EHS. In 2022, she was tasked with scheduling interviews with candidates from across the country and was the lead organizer for staff events such as the EHS Anniversary Luncheon and several retirement celebrations. She also helped in the executive director transition by assisting Kevin Charbonneau in securing meeting times with stakeholders throughout the university. Her daily work includes handling purchase orders, submitting invoices for payment, and interacting with vendors to ensure there are no payment issues. She was recently cross-trained in processing radioactive and biological restricted orders and also provides administrative help and minutes for the Traffic Safety Committee, Shop Safety Committee, and Laboratory Safety Committee. Liz is one of the select EHS employees to now be honored as Employee of the Year and with the Dariusz Czarnota Award of Excellence, which she earned in 2017.
Dariusz Czarnota Award of Excellence
This award is named in honor of Dariusz Czarnota, who was a Safety Advisor at Environmental Health and Safety from 2001 until his untimely death in 2012. His dedication and work ethic exemplified the highest standards of performance and service.
Emily Bludnicki
Regardless of the position that Emily has held in EHS, she has exceeded expectations and performed her duties at a level well above and beyond her job title. She has worked tirelessly to gain more knowledge and awareness in infection prevention and began performing infection control audits and EHS inspections of all Yale Medicine outpatient clinics and Yale Health clinics. Emily has built relationships with her clinic managers and her research PIs while not only providing excellent infection prevention services, but also serving as a safety advisor for lab and non-lab zones on campus. The number of outpatient clinics and the demand for infection control have expanded substantially and Emily met these increases without missing any of her other responsibilities.
Dan Schott
Dan is an extremely driven, independent, reliable, and self-motivated member of the EAS team. He is always taking on a greater workload at very advanced levels of responsibility and continues to grow as an environmental professional within all of our EAS programs. His time management skills are exemplary and his consistent work quality helps set a standard for the department. Dan has single-handedly taken full responsibility for managing permit sampling, responding to all drinking water complaints, and the compliance programming for all of Yale’s roughly 70 emergency generators. He has also taken a larger role in compliance reporting and hosting enforcement inspections.