Three UAA staff recognized with Meritorious Service Award

Dec. 3, 2021

This week Ron Swartz, emergency manager of UAA's Environmental Health & Safety and Risk Management department, Tom Hennessy, affiliate professor in the College of Health and retired infectious disease and epidemiologist doctor for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Tim Edwards, director of safety with the university’s Environmental Health & Safety and Risk Management department, were awarded the UAA Meritorious Service Award for their critical work during the pandemic for our university, community and state.

Recipients of the meritorious service award provide significant public, academic, volunteer or philanthropic service to our campuses and to our Alaska community.

Since COVID-19 irrevocably changed life as we knew it, these three men worked tirelessly to lead the charge of the university's COVID response team. 

In 1994, Thomas Hennessy, M.D., M.P.H., became an Epidemiology Intelligence Service fellow with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In 1998, he joined CDC’s Alaska field station, the Arctic Investigations Program. Throughout his 25-year career, Hennessy has provided leadership in response to some of the largest outbreaks worldwide, including the post-9/11 anthrax attacks, 2003 SARS outbreak, 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic and 2014 Ebola response in West Africa. In 2009, he joined UAA as an affiliate faculty for the Master of Public Health program. Hennessy has led a group of UAA faculty and students to support the Health Department’s response. He also joined UA’s COVID response team to provide medical expertise for mitigation and education efforts.

For two decades, Ronald Swartz has dedicated his career to UAA. Starting as an officer in the University Police Department, he rose through the ranks, eventually training new UPD officers. After the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, Swartz branched out to become an expert in all-hazards training. Not only has he trained UAA employees in emergency response but has offered training statewide on crisis management. In 2015, Swartz transitioned to his current emergency management position. Throughout the pandemic, Swartz liaised between the university, statewide and national emergency management teams.

Relatively new to UAA, Timothy Edwards served in the Air Force Active and Reserve for 30 years, 24 of them as director for safety at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina. Used to operating in stressful situations, Edwards served a tour in Afghanistan, surviving a rocket launch attack within hours of landing. He spent the latter half of his career managing flight safety for pilots, ground crews and aircraft. His training and experience helped him maintain calm in the middle of a storm. Although the pandemic forced Edwards and his team into extended work weeks, it was a situation he was all too familiar with and prepared to handle.

Although Hennessy, Swartz and Edwards were tackling different issues throughout the pandemic, each brought their expertise and years of experience in the field to work toward a common goal: to ensure the safety of students, faculty, staff and community members and to provide a university experience that was positive and conducive to learning for students. 

This team of professionals exemplified leadership by providing guidance and developing protocols. Their safety, public health and crisis management expertise ensured operations ran smoothly at all three University of Alaska campuses.

With work both on and off-campus this unique group, along with many others across UAA including facilities, university police, students affairs, academic affairs, ITS, residence life and advancement, worked together to develop protocol surrounding the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and to ensure that campus operations ran smoothly and safely.

It is uncommon for this prestigious recognition to be awarded to active and current staff members. However, the work that these three men completed deserves the high honor. We thank Ron Swartz, Timothy Edwards and Dr. Thomas Hennesy for their dedication and service to our UA community.