Uthara Unnikrishnan has been named employee of the quarter by the U of A Global Campus. Cheryl Murphy, vice provost for distance education and head of the Global Campus, recognized Unnikrishnan at an October staff meeting.

"I am truly honored and grateful to receive this award," said Unnikrishnan, a data and innovation resource specialist on the Professional and Workforce Development (PWD) team. "I didn't really expect this. It really motivates me to show up every day and learn and grow every day. This award means a lot to me."

The co-workers who nominated Unnikrishnan praised her hard work in report generation and helping PWD transition into a new, standardized process. Most of her daily tasks involve building and maintaining the Slate platform for registration, learner success tracking and building a relationship between learners and the university. She was also instrumental in creating a Slate-based platform for units and departments across campus to create their own registration landing pages for professional skills training courses, which will seamlessly take care of their state workforce reporting at the same time.

Since joining Global Campus in November 2024, Unnikrishnan has played a large role in developing Slate—a tool that helps manage student data and outreach—and was part of a team that received the Global Campus Lightbulb Award for Innovation in the third quarter of 2025. Unnikrishnan's expertise with data management contributed to this system's development from the very beginning.

Unnikrishnan collects and organizes data for the annual report to the Arkansas Department of Higher Education required by the state of Arkansas. With the PWD team undergoing massive changes, Unnikrishnan is helping to create new processes that successfully support the university's professional workforce development initiative.

"Uthara is an indispensable asset to our team and is leading the charge on a massive project that has huge, important implications for the university as a whole," her co-workers said. "She has made huge strides in designing the partner portal in Slate and organizing data for the state workforce report. We're lucky to have her!"

Eve Canty, director of PWD for Global Campus, serves as Unnikrishnan's immediate supervisor.

"Uthara's work has truly been paradigm shifting, not just for Global Campus but for the University of Arkansas as a whole," Canty said. "Modernizing our systems has allowed us not only to collect data as painlessly as possible but also provide a higher level of service and a more responsive educational experience for our learners than ever before."

The Global Campus awards the employee of the quarter to recognize outstanding achievements and accomplishments that relate to the unit's goals and the U of A mission. The award recipient receives a commemorative certificate and a monetary award. The four quarterly awardees may then be eligible to become the Global Campus Employee of the Year.

Other first quarter nominees:

• Jeff Brazil, online student recruitment manager
• Caroline Chandler, web/graphic designer
• Luke Gramlich, senior videographer/editor
• Adam Jones, Blackboard support specialist
• Justin Mazzanti, building specialist
• David Reynolds, animation supervisor
• Noel Sharif, data analyst
• Christina Smith, administrative analyst

The Global Campus supports the U of A academic colleges and schools in the development and delivery of online degree programs and courses and workforce development programs. This unit provides instructional design services, learning technology support, media production services and assistance with financial administration, recruitment and marketing.

The Global Campus also supports the W.E. Manning Memorial Scholarship, which is open to undergraduate and graduate students studying in online degree programs.