Photo: Henry Bouton after being named 2020 Employee of the Year

Each year The Citadel rewards one employee and one team for their superior performance and contributions

The Citadel is proud to recognize Chris Cantell, Mike Cantrell, Justin Palmer, James McAnally and Dave Drake — employees with Information Technology Services — as the Team of the Year and Henry Bouton as the Employee of the Year for 2020.

Staff employees may be nominated for the award in writing by any member of the faculty or staff. The Employee Recognition Committee reviews all nominations and selects an employee based on exceptional contributions to The Citadel, fellow employees and the community in the following areas:

• Service and quality of work in performing “beyond the call of duty”
• Impact of professionalism and dedication to excellence
• Initiative and reliability beyond required assignments and expectations
• Uniqueness of contributions

Here’s a look at what sets these employees apart:

Henry Bouton, 2020 Employee of the Year

Henry Bouton is the Director of Intramurals and Extramurals who schedules, organizes and carries out the day-to-day operations of more than 20 intramural sports on campus.

The nomination letters read in part:

“Mr. Bouton works with quiet reserve, so there may be a habit of overlooking myriad of daily and strategic tasks that he accomplishes. The Citadel would be “lost” without his leadership. A highlight is the work he does in the classroom and on the field of play with cadets enrolled in the Sports Officiating class. These students develop a sense of authority that comes from knowledge acquisition; they are shown how to handle their own mistakes professionally, and they are given the opportunity to practice maintaining a cool head, knowing Mr. Bouton has their back.”

I have personally witnessed Citadel alumni come into Deas Hall to find Henry and talk to him because of the positive impact he had on them during their cadet years. He is an ambassador for the Citadel as an alumnus himself in the way he treats members, visitors, and cadets. Henry develops relationships and treats everyone with courtesy and respect while upholding the Citadel’s Core Values of Honor, Duty, and Respect. Henry can tell you a little bit about nearly every member, staff member, and many of the cadets because he takes the time to get to know people.

Data Center Infrastructure Move, 2020 Team of the Year

Chris Cantell, Mike Cantrell, Justin Palmer, James McAnally and Dave Drake work in Information Technology Services. The team worked through Christmas break — and through the night — to move critical IT infrastructure from one data center to another.

Their nomination letter reads in part:

This team typically works behind the scenes to keep our IT infrastructure up-to-date, secure, and available. Working in IT provides a unique situation where most of your work is seen as successful if it goes unnoticed by the end user. This move is another example of the extraordinary work that they perform late at night, on weekends, and holidays so that the IT systems are available during normal work hours.

The team also implemented new firewalls to provide increased throughput to the internet while also providing new, signature-based filtering. Finally, the local switching infrastructure for the data center equipment was upgraded from 1 Gigabit to 10 Gigabit, thereby significantly increasing the throughput available to the system.