March Acorn Accolade awarded to programmer Terrance Copling

The Acorn Accolade Technology Award of Excellence recognizes one technology employee each month for exemplary service to Elon.

Terrance Copling accepting the Acorn Accolade from CIO Christopher Waters.
Terrance Copling, a programmer in the Administrative Computing department, received the March Acorn Accolade. Each month, this award is presented to one Instructional and Campus Technologies employee in recognition of his or her exemplary service to Elon University. I&CT employees must be nominated by their department heads to the assistance vice president of technology to be considered for the award.

Copling has worked at Elon for nearly three years and significantly contributed to several important projects, primarily supporting the Human Resources and Accounting departments. He has dedicated much time to working on the rollout of DUO, an authentication system that makes it more difficult to hack into Elon’s network.

Copling also developed new systems for the HR department to address the Affordable Care Act.

Regarding one of his recent projects, Copling’s supervisor, Heather Hutchings, recalled, “I was so pleased multiple times when our business users would cite a problem, but then follow with ‘but Terrance did xyz…’ to resolve the problem or improve the process.” According to Hutchings, Copling often understands his business partners’ needs better than they do themselves, and approaches each task with professionalism and patience.