The USF College of Public Health (COPH) staff working on the recently launched, interdisciplinary Disease Intervention Specialist Training Academy (DISTA) has received a USF Outstanding Staff Award.

DISTA offers public health professionals additional training and skill development to help advance their careers.

The COPH recipients include Andres Abril, Ann Marie Little, Evan Itle, James Taylor, Neil Bleiweiss and Sandra Miller. Also nominated, but ineligible due to lack of tenure, were Samantha Lopez, Silvia Moreno, Amethyst Surpis and Samantha Deveaux.

The team members helped bring DISTA to life with their project management, course development, educational design and fiscal management skills, said the team’s nominator Dr. Ann Joyce, director of the college’s Lifelong Learning Academy (LLA), under which DISTA falls.

“Over the past year, the team has been devoted to creating the DISTA program to address workforce development gaps for disease intervention specialists across Florida,” Joyce said. “At its core, the DISTA program is about maximizing the potential of employees and providing them with advanced opportunities they could not find anywhere else. The DISTA micro-certificate program is a well-thought-out training opportunity that isn’t offered anywhere else in the United States and is an exemplar for future programs. For this reason, this team is most deserving of this award.”

“I feel extremely honored to receive this award,” said Andres Abril, who works with the college’s Education, Assessment and Technology Office. “To work on the DISTA project as a learning designer has been an exciting and unique experience. I had the opportunity to collaborate with a group of exceptional faculty members from our college in the development and implementation of several online micro-learning modules. These online modules have played a crucial role in advancing the knowledge and expertise of public health professionals, making a lasting impact on the field.”

Neil Bleiweiss, another learning designer on the program, echoed those thoughts.

“DISTA is a huge undertaking for the COPH and the LLA, as it’s our first major micro-certificate project and is really helping us expand our reach outside of the Tampa area, even receiving national attention to lead more learners to our professional development programming,” he said. “It’s been a great experience being able to learn more about not only instructional design. but the field of public health by developing these courses for DISTA, and I am honored to be a recipient of an Outstanding Staff Award for this project.”

The Outstanding Staff Award, which this year had more than 100 recipients, is presented annually to eligible staff and administration employees who have gone “above and beyond” in their performance and support of the values presented in USF’s Strategic Plan—In Pursuit of Excellence. The COPH team received their award at a special ceremony hosted by USF President Rhea Law on Oct. 6.

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health