Last week Connie Fox was awarded the 2020 Outstanding CLAS Staff Member Award. As the only full-time professional staff member in our department, she is recognized as the final authority on laboratory safety, waste disposal, chemical inventory, and supply orders. Fox has been laboratory director since 1984 and has served the university longer than any of the current full-time faculty members – however, her history with IU goes back further. In 1978 she received her undergraduate degree in chemistry (B.A.) at IU South Bend and then headed to Northwestern to earn a graduate degree in chemistry (M.S.) in 1980. Fox was an exceptional student at IU South Bend and won both the Senior Excellence award and Analytical Chemistry award that we still offer to students to this day. Fox is incredibly well-respected on campus; her colleagues and students note her experience, knowledge, foresight, sharpness, and fairness. While chemists don’t typically have much naval inclination, different faculty have both used ships to describe Fox, calling her the ‘engine that drives the department’ and the ‘hull that keeps us afloat’. Another commented “when I first interviewed at IU South Bend for my faculty position, I wrote in my notes that Connie Fox is the person who runs the department. There is no question that she still does.” We all fear the day of her retirement knowing that it will take years for her replacement to fill even one of her shoes. Congratulations on this award; it is well-deserved!
