Smith Receives Williams Service Award

Illinois State University's Justin Smith is the 2010 recipient of the Williams Outstanding Technology Service Award established by David and Kay Williams.  The award recognizes an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the University in the area of technology and service.

Smith, an alumnus of Illinois State, has worked for 10 years in the University Computer Help Desk, serving as primary technical writer and editor, providing second level support on technical issues reported to the Help Desk, fielding emergency calls, administering the help desk tracking software and assisting the Help Desk manager with day-to-day management issues.

Well known and well regarded across campus for his technical writing skills, Smith is primarily responsible for the Help Desk's growing knowledge base of articles that allow visitors to the Help Desk site to research their own solutions to technical issues. As a result of Smith's work in this area, visitors to the site know that they can count on clear, concise solutions from the Help Desk knowledge base, written in language that they can easily understand. The Help Desk has received many compliments from other universities on the documentation in the knowledge base, along with requests to refer their own campuses to Illinois State's articles.

 "Thanks to Justin Smith, Illinois State has a wonderfully clear collection of help articles addressing a mind-boggling range of technical topics," said Jim Kalmbach, professor and associate chair of English, in his nomination of Smith." Scott Genung, director of Telecommunications & Networking, commented that Smith "has a long history of dedicated commitment to his work and has played a significant role in helping to shape the Help Desk into the unit that it is today."