A behind-the-scenes modernization job is often invisible until it starts making everything else work better. That is the story behind Uthara Unnikrishnan being named Employee of the Quarter by the University of Arkansas (U of A) Global Campus, a recognition tied to her work improving how the university collects, manages, and uses data to support professional learning and workforce development.

The award, announced by the University of Arkansas newsroom on Nov. 21, recognizes Unnikrishnan, a data and innovation resource specialist on the Professional and Workforce Development (PWD) team. At an October staff meeting, Cheryl Murphy, vice provost for distance education and head of the Global Campus, presented the honor, spotlighting a role that blends technical infrastructure with day-to-day service for learners and campus partners.

Unnikrishnan’s responsibilities center on building and maintaining Slate, a platform used for registration, learner success tracking, and outreach. In practical terms, it is the kind of system that determines whether a working adult can find a training opportunity, enroll without friction, and receive follow-up support that is relevant and timely. For staff and administrators, it is also the backbone of accurate reporting, compliance, and planning, especially when workforce programs touch multiple departments and operate at a statewide scale.

Colleagues who nominated Unnikrishnan pointed to two themes: the rigor of her reporting work and her leadership in helping PWD shift into a more standardized process. That standardization matters because workforce programming is often a fast-moving environment, shaped by employer needs, state priorities, and rapid changes in how adults access education. Systems that are inconsistent or fragmented can slow down enrollment, create gaps in learner communication, and make statewide reporting more difficult. The Global Campus writeup described Unnikrishnan as an “indispensable asset” leading a project with “huge, important implications for the university as a whole.”

One of the most concrete examples of that broader impact is Unnikrishnan’s work on a Slate-based platform that allows units and departments across campus to build their own registration landing pages for professional skills training courses, while also supporting state workforce reporting at the same time. For a public university, that combination is significant: it reduces duplicative effort across teams, improves consistency in how learners move through registration, and strengthens the university’s ability to document outcomes and participation accurately.

The Arkansas Department of Higher Education requires an annual report, and the University of Arkansas article notes that Unnikrishnan collects and organizes data for that statewide submission. That responsibility becomes especially high-stakes during periods of organizational change, when teams are adjusting workflows and expectations. The announcement framed the PWD team as being in the middle of “massive changes,” with Unnikrishnan helping create processes that can support the university’s broader professional workforce development initiative.

Eve Canty, director of PWD for Global Campus and Unnikrishnan’s supervisor, connected the work directly to service quality. Canty said the modernization of systems has not only made data collection easier, but has also enabled a more responsive educational experience for learners. That framing reflects a growing reality in higher education: operational excellence is increasingly a student success strategy, especially in online and workforce settings where learners often juggle jobs, family obligations, and time constraints.

Unnikrishnan has also been recognized as part of a team that received the Global Campus Lightbulb Award for Innovation in the third quarter of 2025, an earlier signal that her contributions are helping shape how the unit approaches new tools and workflows. She joined Global Campus in November 2024, meaning the Employee of the Quarter recognition arrives relatively early in her tenure, at a moment when institutions across the country are trying to move from legacy systems toward platforms that can support modern enrollment and learner engagement.

For South Asian Americans, these kinds of recognitions can be easy to overlook because they do not always come with a prominent leadership title. But they represent a different form of influence: the ability to design the operational architecture that helps large institutions deliver on their mission. Unnikrishnan is described by New India Abroad as “Indian-origin,” with earlier professional experience as a banker at South Indian Bank in Kerala and academic work at the University of Arkansas prior to joining the Global Campus team. Those steps reflect a path familiar to many immigrants and children of immigrants in the United States, where advanced education and specialized expertise become gateways into roles that carry significant institutional responsibility.

The University of Arkansas Global Campus itself provides useful context for why this award matters beyond one person’s day-to-day tasks. The unit supports academic colleges and schools in developing and delivering online degree programs and courses, as well as workforce development programs, and it provides instructional design, learning technology support, media services, and assistance with financial administration, recruitment, and marketing. That broad portfolio means a data modernization project in one corner of Global Campus can ripple outward, affecting multiple programs and learner populations.

The Employee of the Quarter program is designed to recognize achievements that align with unit goals and the university’s mission, and recipients receive a certificate and a monetary award. Quarterly winners can also be considered for Global Campus Employee of the Year, making this recognition part of a larger pathway for acknowledging sustained impact. In Unnikrishnan’s case, the narrative in the official announcement consistently points to scale: tools meant for campus-wide use, reporting requirements that connect to state systems, and improvements that don’t just tidy operations but expand what the institution can deliver to learners.

At a time when public universities face pressure to show outcomes, serve working adults, and connect education to economic opportunity, the infrastructure work often determines whether ambitions can become reality. Unnikrishnan’s recognition is a reminder that leadership is not only about being visible. Sometimes it is about building the system so that everyone else can succeed within it.

Key Takeaways About Uthara Unnikrishnan

• Named University of Arkansas Global Campus Employee of the Quarter in a Nov. 21 announcement. 
• Works as a data and innovation resource specialist on the Professional and Workforce Development team. 
• Helps build and maintain Slate tools for registration, tracking, and outreach across workforce programs. 
• Plays a key role in organizing data for annual reporting to the Arkansas Department of Higher Education. 
• Represents a growing footprint of Indian-origin professionals shaping U.S. higher education operations.