Sandridge Award Winner Kay Christopher in UVA Today

kay sandridge
June 14, 2019

Congratulations again to Kay Christopher, a 2019 Sandridge Outstanding Contributor Award winner! This year's award winners have been spotlighted in today's edition of UVA Today. As quoted in the article, "When it comes to equipment, lab preparatory coordinator Kay Christopher keeps it all in good working order, from fluorescence microscopes to tissue culture incubators to vortex mixers, for the biology department’s lab sections for upper-level courses. Friendly, supportive and professional, Christopher has worked in biology for almost 17 years, outfitting from four to nine different kinds of labs each semester, depending on the courses offered. Those courses cover anatomy and physiology, microbiology, functional genomics and experimental plant biology, among other topics. Her duties include assisting professors in planning lab activities, ordering supplies, helping set up each lab and working with the graduate teaching assistants. She takes the initiative to test new methods for experiments and works weekends to check on live organisms. One initiative she undertook on her own saved students $4,000 last semester and will continue to help future students: she noticed that lab coats were thrown away each semester, so she started collecting them and sterilizing them to give to the new group of students, who then didn’t have to purchase a lab coat. Associate professor Dorothy Schafer, who also serves as associate chair of biology, said, “She has a golden touch when it comes to inspiring students in the lab.”

To read about the award and the other 2019 winners, please click here for the UVA Today article.


This year's award winners, joined by Leonard W. Sandridge, center with UVA President Jim Ryan and Rector Rusty Connor,
Health System CEO Pamela Sutton-Wallace, far left and VP for Human Resources Kelley Stuck, far right. (Photos by Coe Sweet)