Bea Jimenez and Nick Tiemersma Named Northwestern IT Employees of the Year
Posted Date: April 17, 2025
While individuals with their own roles, work styles, and impacts, Bea Jimenez and Nick Tiemersma are both lauded by their colleagues as collaborative, high-impact contributors to the work of Northwestern IT. At the March 2025 Extended Staff Meeting, Bea and Nick each earned Northwestern IT’s highest individual staff recognition, the Employee Excellence Award, for their dedication to consistently delivering the highest standards possible of both support and leadership.
As a learning engineer in Teaching and Learning Technologies (TLT), Bea provides instructional design expertise for Canvas, Northwestern’s learning management system, and related educational technologies. In his role as digital designer in IT Communications, Nick is responsible for managing the Northwestern IT visual brand.
Bea Jimenez: Continuous Learner
Bea is a guiding light for novel and complex challenges. She is not afraid of the unknown and embraces continuous learning to bring helpful insights to faculty.
With the rise of generative AI technologies, she developed a new workshop in collaboration with Eun Sandoval-Lee from the Searle Center for Advancing Learning and Teaching on using AI as an instructor. The workshop, “Hacks for Instructors: Saving Time by Using Generative AI,” was creative both in content and framing and had nearly 400 registrants. Bea and Eun were invited to present this to faculty in the Feinberg School of Medicine.
“Bea makes the ‘behind-the-scenes' work manageable and addresses inquiries and issues in a manner that makes asking for help encouraged and figuring something out possible,” said Eun Sandoval-Lee, project administrator, strategic initiatives, in the Searle Center.
It was a nice surprise since I was not expecting it. Being appreciated by the people I admire and work alongside is the most rewarding part.”
Bea Jimenez
Learning Engineer, Teaching and Learning Technologies
2024 Employee Excellence Award Winner
Nick Tiemersma: Style and Substance
Nick brings clarity, care, and style to everything Northwestern IT—IT websites, digital displays, newsletters, social media, event branding, and more. For example, in his work with Research Computing and Data Services (RCDS), there is a lot of information to communicate to a broad research audience that includes students, staff, and faculty. There are many services across campus that support research, so standing out among the sea of services in a way that’s quick to understand and easy to digest is critical to researchers’ success on campus.
He is someone you want to work with because he's an intuitive collaborator and makes everyone’s lives easier with minimal back and forth. In 2024, when the first CoDEx symposium was envisioned and executed in short amount of time, Nick rose to the occasion and diligently provided support and guidance in delivering a substantial amount of work for the event’s branding, which included the website, digital promotion, and all on-site print materials.
“If it were not for Nick, many of our services across IT would go unused or continue with lack of awareness. He puts a final polish on Northwestern IT, which is critical in how people view us and trust in our services,” said Jackie Milhans, director of the RCDS unit.
I'm honored and grateful—this recognition reflects the fantastic work we've accomplished working with talented teams across IT. I couldn't have done it without their creativity, enthusiasm, and support, especially with IT Communications.”
Nick Tiemersma
Digital Designer, IT Communications
2024 Employee Excellence Award Winner
Award-Winning Collaboration
Among their many achievements—and there are many more—both Bea and Nick were recognized by their nominators for their work and collaboration on the Canvas Hall of Fame.
Bea conceived the idea during the shift to remote learning amid the pandemic and partnered with Nick to create web and print materials that were instrumental in the program’s success and recognition. During this time, TLT worked with hundreds of instructors to help them learn new tools and techniques and to translate their teaching to a new modality.
To recognize these efforts, the Canvas Hall of Fame invites students to nominate Canvas sites that surpass expectations in multiple categories. The winners are honored at a ceremony during the annual TEACHx conference. This program has proved massively popular with both instructors and students and has elicited more than 650 nominations each year.
As further testament to Bea and Nick’s high caliber of work, innovation, and collaboration, the web and print materials design used to recognize faculty success and innovation with Canvas has gained praise from several other schools nationwide who want to replicate the program and directly from Canvas’ vendor, Instructure, who featured an article about Northwestern IT on their website and social media channels.
The (Good) Reviews Are In
According to their nominators, colleagues, and partners, Bea’s and Nick’s impact is priceless.
Anna Luce, lead learning engineer in TLT, nominated Bea and said, “Bea continues to be an invaluable member of the Teaching and Learning Technology team, a collaborative colleague across units, and an innovator who conceives impactful new projects and works to see them through.”
This sentiment was reflected in statements from campus partners in the Office of Fellowships and the School of Communication, and by Victoria Getis, senior director of TLT.
Serena Simpson, communications specialist in IT Communications, nominated Nick and said, “To say that Nick Tiemersma makes us all look good is a gross understatement. Only one of us has the job of making the impact of our collective work visible and legible through clear, concise, compelling, polished, on-brand, beautiful digital and print visual media. Nick’s work is not only singular; it is consistent and indeed excellent.”
This was echoed by his frequent collaborators in TLT and RCDS, and by his entire team.
If you haven’t had the pleasure of working with Bea or Nick yet, find an opportunity to collaborate with them and let the results speak for themselves.