Jon Jacobs Wins Science Staff Award of Excellence

Congratulations to Research Technologist Jon Jacobs for winning a 2014 Faculty of Science Award of Excellence for Staff.

Jon manages Earth Sciences’ Machine Shop, including expensive milling, welding equipment and lathes, and training graduate and undergraduate students and postdocs who use the equipment for research. He does so with enthusiasm, ingenuity, patience, compassion and total dedication.

Jon goes far beyond his normal duties with his "can do" attitude and even initiated a training program for high school students enrolled in Machine Technology (his way of giving back to his trade). Jon relishes challenges, especially complex tasks he has never tried before. He is exceptional at building unique devices for research, teaching and displays, at a reasonable cost.

Letters in support of his nomination tell of Jon being in the shop after hours to help students build equipment for their thesis projects. Furthermore he regularly attends Thursday evening research meetings because he likes to see students present their results on experiments he helped prepare.

Despite always being busy, Jon puts aside what he is doing and either solves the problem, or schedules a time for it. No matter what the constraints, he will find the best solution with his imperturbable, level-headed approach. We look forward to many more years of outstanding service from such a dedicated member of the Earth Sciences department.