Shanna Snider wins Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Professional Service

Shanna Snider joined UB in 2011 as an instructional support technician in the Department of Biological Sciences, where she expertly manages the department’s laboratories.

Snider ensures laboratory classes are prepared for instruction, oversees teaching assistants and students using advanced equipment, and works with faculty on developing new experiments for their courses.

Colleagues praise Snider’s time-management skills, which she uses to ready the labs so students can run multiple experiments on the same day, work with various model organisms and apply a range of advanced techniques.

To facilitate, Snider provides streamlined notes and visuals for teaching assistants. If not for her efficient planning, faculty insist these upper-division labs would not run as effectively as they do.

Snider often works evenings and weekends, preparing cell cultures for time-dependent observations and measurements. She is known as a stickler for detail, and for making sure all tasks are performed in exemplary fashion.

“Shanna looks into the future, does whatever is needed to prepare, predicts what’s needed and yet also manages to remain calm with whatever wrenches students or circumstances throw in our path,” says Jessica Poulin, teaching professor and director of the Honors Program in biological sciences. “I have come to rely on her presence to ensure my very compressed summer schedule class is as stress free as possible.”