June 19, 2007 To whom it may concern: It is always a strange feeling to find yourself in a position where you have been at a job longer than your boss has. This was the situation I was in when Denise Henry took over as supervisor to the CyberTutor program in January 2006. I have never encountered someone so willing and so excited to learn about her job. She was absorbing it almost faster than I could teach it. By the end of one month, Denise had mastered not only an incredibly complicated and cutting edge program, but almost an entire organization faster than her superiors who had arrived a month before her. Soon enough, she was showing me parts of the technology and the program that I had not encountered after having been there a year. The UCCP CyberTutor program was quite a monstrous task to undertake. Denise was suddenly thrust into a world of headsets and online classrooms, messy spreadsheets that kept track of hundreds of virtual students, and employees she would only see twice out of the year who she would somehow have to develop a relationship with over chat boxes and web cams. Beyond that, the administrative duties of the jobs she was to oversee were only loosely defined and there was no definite system in place to tally even simple tasks like the hours her employees worked. By the end of her time at UCCP, Denise had, among other things, created systems for employee timesheets and training new employees, standardized both Advanced Placement and college prep versions of virtual student help desks (Blackboard sites that UCCP students used to access tutors and various other resources), restructured the student log system, literally created an entirely new AP Workshop program, and orchestrated major tutoring sessions with schools and after school programs. I think she sleeps sometimes too. Denise Henry may have been my supervisor, but throughout these past two years, she has also become my mentor and my friend. She made it a priority to develop individual working relationships with all fifteen CyberTutors, at least half of whom she would only see four days out of the year. She somehow managed to balance the fact that we were, first and foremost, college students, and yet never let us forget how much potential and ability she saw in each of us; Denise made sure we all understood that she saw us as an asset to her and to the program. She always had a Plan B and sometimes she even needed to pull out Plans C and D and she did it without skipping a step. She was incredibly adaptable to every tutor’s academic and personal needs and we could tell she honestly cared about our well-being. She wanted to know about our lives outside of the job and let us into hers as well. There is not one tutor I know who has anything but incredible words to say about this woman. We love her. Any program should consider itself lucky to have Denise Henry on its team. She is one of the most hard-working, thoughtful, genuine individuals I know. It has been a blessing to have her in my life. Sincerely, Pamela Capalad Pamela Capalad UCCP Lead CyberTutor 510-364-0865