Page 16 - Aerotech News and Review, Feb. 3 2017

AFSA hosts wine tasting at local vets home
by Diane Betzler
staff writer
The Air Force Sergeants Asso- ciation Chapter 1328 from Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., along with the American Medical Response, an Antelope Valley emergency medi- cal team, treated resident veterans at the William J. “Pete” Knight V eterans’ Home in Lancaster to a fun afternoon of wine tasting and a palate-pleasing snack of cheese and crackers.
It was a bittersweet event for AFSA’s outgoing president, Senior Master Sgt. Adam Pawelek who was overseeing his last official AFSA ac- tivity as president of the organization.
Chana Alexander, representing the AMR, Pawelek and Tech. Sgt. Michael Burd, senior adviser for AFSA’s Chapter 1328, took advan- tage of the social event and made a special monetary presentation to the home and to the families of two local fallen heroes.
“We collected $8,300 from our third annual Hits for Heroes softball tournament played last October,” Al- exander offered, and during Thurs- day’s wine tasting event the teams di- vided a percentage of those proceeds between the local veterans’ home and the families of the two fallen heroes.
The AMR is known for hosting charitable events and often shares the monies raised with the local AFSA which, in turn, spreads the wealth with many other veteran projects in need.
“Our goal is to help support fun projects for the resident veterans,” Burd said. He said the government
doesn’t support certain quality of life projects for vets, so AFSA targets those areas to pitch in and help with.
During the Hits for Heroes event AMR also sold t-shirts honoring each fallen hero, one for Sgt. Steve Owen of the LA County Sheriff’s Depart- ment who was killed while respond- ing to a domestic dispute, and the other for EMP Christopher “Chris” Parry, an AMR team member who was killed in a traffic accident, the goal is to not let these heroes be for-
gotten.
Lawrence Hawkins, supervising
rehabilitation therapist for the local veterans’ home accepted the home’s share of donations and said receiving such a gift is “awesome!”
“Our veterans appreciate every- thing that AFSA and the AMR does for us, they are part of our family,” he said.
“We love our veterans past and current,” Burd said.
Photograph by Diane Betzler
School children from a local elementary school made a painting of the American flag and sent it to the Veterans Home as a gift to the residents. Pictured holding flag resident veteran Ed Dobrzanski (left) and resident veteran Robert Phillips (right). Standing (from left) are Tech. Sgt. Michael Burd; Senior Master Sgt. Adam Pawelek, AMR team member Chana Alexader and her 9-year-old son Connor who often volenteers his services to veteran causes.
Above: Alex Ballentine, an AMR volunteer; Ken Fowler, a resident veteran and Tech. Sgt. Michael Burd open the wine-tasting event. Right: Members of AFSA Chapter 1328, along with representatives of American Medical Response, visit resident veterans at the William J. “Pete” Knight Veterans Home in Lancaster, Calif. The groups presented the veterans’ home with a check for $2,700 to help fund quality of life projects. From left: Outgoing AFSA Chapter 1328 President Senior Master Sgt. Adam Pawelek; Veterans home Supervising Rehabilitation Therapist Lawrence Hawkins; Nine-year-old Connor Alexander; AMR Community Service Specialist Chana Alexander; Senior Adviser, AFSA Chapter 1328 Tech. Sgt. Michael Burd and volunteer Alex Ballentine.
Photographs by Diane Betzler
NASA, Armstrong great places to work
by Jay Levine
NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center
NASA was selected as the best place to work for the fifth straight year in a survey of federal government employees.
NASA Armstrong Flight Research Cen- ter in California ranked 28 in the list of best places to work in a large agency, which was 3.3 percent better than the previous year with a score of 77.5 percent. Center scores have been increasing every year since 2012 and are significantly better than the first survey tally of 60.7 percent in 2005.
“Thank you all for your feedback,” Center Director David McBride said. “We take it seriously and we will use your responses to make Armstrong an even better place to work. NASA had the highest level of participation in the federal government for employee feed- back. My challenge to you to participate in the survey caused all of the other NASA centers to take our challenge to increase their partici- pation.”
Employees awarded the highest marks to teamwork with a 77.2 percent mark, 2.2 per- cent better than last year. The next two highest areas of approvals were for innovation at 75.2 percent, on par with the previous total of 74.6 percent, and training and development at 72.1 percent, besting last survey’s 70 percent.
The biggest increases from the previous survey were recorded for support for diversity
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at 69.6 percent, up from 66.7 percent, perfor- mance-based reward and advancement at 60.2 percent from 57 percent and effective leader- ship increased 2.6 percent from 64.9 percent to an approval rating of 67.5 percent.
Across the agency, eight other organizations were recognized including NASA Goddard Space Flight Center ranked 10th with an 81.2 percent approval rating, NASA Johnson Space Center and Marshall Space Flight Center ties at 11th with an 80.2 percent favorable tally. Langley Research Center was 21st, with a 78.1 percent approval rating.
Rounding out the NASA selections repre- senting the top 40 places to work were Glenn Research Center coming in at 32nd with a 76.8 percent favorable rating, Kennedy Space Cen- ter at 34th with a 76.5 percent approval rating, Ames Research Center at 39th with a tally of 75.5 percent and NASA Headquarters at 40th with a 75.4 percent approval rating.
The annual results of the Employee View- point Survey are published by the Partnership for Public Service. It ranks nearly 400 federal organizations by overall employee satisfaction and commitment and also evaluates key work- place focus areas such as innovation, training and development, leadership and diversity. Participation increased at all NASA centers in this recent survey.
NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden said he knows why job satisfaction is high at NASA. “Your passion and dedication to our mis-
sions and each other is evident in the results, because every single question increased in favorability,” he said. “This commitment to continuous innovation — whether applied to
our missions or to improving our work envi- ronment — is what makes NASA so special and is the fuel for our journey to Mars and all of our cutting edge missions in air and space.
The NASA Armstrong staff works at one of the best places to work in the federal government according to the results of a recent survey.
NASA photograph by Tom Tschida
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