Paul Diedrich

Unclassified employee

Started at KU: 1977.

Current title: Associate director, Schiefelbusch Institute of Life Span Studies.

What that means: Diedrich is responsible for project development, and roughly 90 percent of his time goes to providing services in preparing, submitting and negotiating external funding proposals. He also helps develop departmental resources and provides departmental analyses as requested by the director.

Notable: During the past year, Diedrich has been responsible for preparing more than 190 external proposals to funding agencies. The number of proposals has increased approximately 33 percent in recent years.

JoAnn Berner

University support staff

Started at KU: 1985

Current title: Administrative specialist, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

What that means: Her duties include maintaining the chair's schedule and assuming responsibility for a wide array of faculty personnel matters.

Notable: In the past two years, JoAnn has organized the searches for 10 new faculty members. Over a four-month period, she organized campus visits and interviews for more than 20 candidates. She devised a system to make sure nothing fell through the cracks.