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O And the Award Goes To……..

Many thanks go to the South Texas Blood and TissueCenter’s hosting this year’s Award gala. DeliciousMexican food and the stylin’ sounds of the DJs keptthe audience entertained throughout the event.President-Elect, Jose Garcia, wowed us with his DJacumen, taking the mic on several occasions.

The 2010 Presidents Award of Merit, OutstandingIndividual was presented to Laura Sugg, ATI TrainingCenter. Nominated by Carter BloodCare in Bedford,Laura was recognized for her commitment and effortsin consistently increasing donor collections. She multi-plied the school’s three annual drives to five, and isalways willing to pull together extra drives based oncommunity needs. She is credited with creating a dayand a night shift for each drive to better accommo-date students. In 2009, ATI blood drives collected atotal of 530 units, more than five times the previousyear’s total. Laura’s efforts with ATI are a tremendoushelp, especially during the summer slump when gradeschools and traditional universities are out. In additionto her work with Carter BloodCare, Laura works withvarious projects including the National Marrow DonorProgram, the food and toy drives for the RonaldMcDonald House, as well as the health department tomake sure all students are updated on necessaryshots. The people who work with Laura Sugg say thesuccess of ATI blood drives are directly linked toLaura’s passion for the mission. It is evident that herjob as chairperson is more than a job, and a blooddrive is more than an event.

Nominated by Our Lady of the Lake Regional MedicalCenter in Baton Rouge, the 2010 Award of Merit,Contribution, was presented to Louisiana NationalGuard’s Youth Challenge Program (YCP), a preventiverather than remedial youth-at-risk program which tar-gets unemployed drug-free and law-free high schooldropouts, 16 to 18 years of age. The YCP platelet pro-gram has been highlighted as a model in severalSCABB presentations. The YCP platelet program

exemplifies how to successfully plan, schedule andcollect apheresis platelets on mobile drives. Since thatfirst platelet drive in May 2008, YCP has conducted 42platelet drives that resulted in a total of 532 apheresisplatelets collections. They have conducted 25 blooddrives since November 2005, collecting 1,363 wholeblood and 338 2RBCs. These cadets should beapplauded for their hard work and perseverance inbettering their lives and the lives of so many others.

Dr. Matthew Gottlieb Rising Star Award was presentedto Lisa Fults. Since joining SCABB, Lisa hit the groundrunning participating in a variety of activities. Lisa pre-sented at the 2007 SCABB annual meeting as well asat the AABB annual meeting an oral abstract titledAlternative Method for QC of leukoreduced RBCsUsing Total Hgb in Place of percent RBC Recovery, aswell as two poster presentations; "AutomationEnhances Component Production, and Evaluation ofRepeat Incomplete Filtrations. She has co-authoredtwo articles for the PULSE. Currently Lisa is the co-chair of both the Technical Scientific Committee andLocal Arrangements Committee.

The Cornerstone Award was presented to the SouthTexas Blood and Tissue Center and its subsidiaryQualTex Laboratories, which have contributed signifi-cantly to the success of the South Central Associationof Blood Banks for many years. This organization hasbeen an avid supporter of the Association and thisyear is no exception as evidenced by twelve SouthTexas and QualTex employees currently serving theassociation via committees and the board of directors!Furthermore, at the annual business meeting, the vot-ing delegates accepted the nomination slate electingJose Garcia as President-Elect, who 2011 will becomethe 54th President of the association.

Congratulations to all the award winners and to every-one for a fantastic meeting and award event.

O Protégé Profile - Matthew Poncin

I am excited about the yearahead of me in the SCABBMentor/ Protégé program. Ihave been with CarterBloodCare (CBC) for sevenand a half years. I workedthree years in the ComponentProduction Lab, two years atCBC’s Satellite Children’sMedical Center of Dallas

Transfusion Service before transferring to mycurrent position as a lab assistant in theReference and Transfusion Lab (R&T). I enjoymy job and blood banking tremendously. It’s anew challenge everyday, and I plan on making it

my career. In addition to working full time inR&T, I am going to school in the evenings, andwork PRN in the Blood Bank for ST. PaulUniversity Hospital at UT Southwestern.

I have planned my quarterly projects on paperand can’t wait to get started on them. I amworking on submitting an abstract/poster and Iwant to be a moderator at the SCABB annualmeeting next year.

One project that I am most excited about isserving on the committee to help with inventorymanagement using the new Haemonetics freez-ing method. This new freezing method is a

closed system that allows a 14-day expirationwhen the unit is thawed. However, to use thismethod the units must be frozen within six daysof collection. A new process must be imple-mented to manage the antigen negative andrare units at CBC.

Another project that I am excited about is cre-ating job classifications for lab assistantsbecause I believe this is going to be the mostchallenging of all tasks. Not many laboratoriescurrently use lab assistants and those that doonly use them for a limited amount of jobresponsibilities. I am ready for what lies aheadof me and the challenges that come with it.

Check out 2010 Annual Meeting & Exhibit Show photos at www.scabb.org>Annual Meeting