Advocacy

It seems to me that I would never have thought I would be writing this many recommendation letters. Every year I wind up writing letters for Preekies applying to college, undergrads applying to grad school, graduates for their portfolio files, colleagues for RTP, and all kinds of people for awards. There really does seem to be a whole different scale for measuring this type of language. Thank goodness for the thesaurus, otherwise I would certainly run out of superlatives and lapse out of "recommendation letter speak" into normal English.

Would you give your award to this person?

It is my privilege and great pleasure to nominate Joe PM for the 2005 KM Fabrics Inc. Technical Production Award. Over the past several years I have had the opportunity to observe Joe PM as a student, and employee, and as a working professional. I can think of no individual better suited to receive this award.

Joe PM has been an excellent student. From his first day at CMU he has been laser focused on becoming a complete Production Management professional. Joe PM is particularly talented at recognizing the resources he needs and then working diligently to access and assimilate those skills and information. He has undertaken an impressive range of coursework, not shying away from any management or technical content regardless of complexity or production discipline, performing with distinction in classes from Physics of Stage Machinery to Costume Shop Management (the latter being a course he had us create for him). It has been extremely gratifying to watch him absorb, apply, and synthesize the content of his education. I have not had any other student who has made better use of their time in our program.

Joe PM is an outstanding and professional Production Manager. He has an excellent grasp of personnel, schedule, and resource issues. He respects the contributions of his team and sees himself as an artistic collaborator as well as a manager. His communication skills are superb and are flexible to best fit the people and situations involved. I've observed him in action on projects from small theatre through large concert and festival events. On projects of all kinds of scope Joe PM creates intelligent plans, manages smoothly, makes solid decisions on the fly, treats his people well and is able to motivate them to perform at their best. He is a tremendous asset to any production in which he participates.

I have watched Joe PM grow from a student assistant to an integral part of our departmental production operations. This past year on my recommendation the School of Drama contracted Joe PM as our Assistant Production Manager on top of his regular responsibilities as a graduate student for this season. Truth be told, I've recommended trying to tie him up for as long as possible under the kind of draft day logic that when you have the chance you take the best player available, and that this was that type of opportunity. I feel the same way about this award. You could not find a person more worthy of this recognition.

Cross your fingers!