The KDOC honored employees in its uniformed, non-uniformed and contract divisions. The KDOC also recognized two recipients posthumously for the Volunteer of the Year Award Monday. Kansas Senator Molly Baumgardner, R-Louisburg, addressed the 47 finalists for the awards during a luncheon following the ceremony.

“Every single day you get up, you get dressed and you go report for duty or you report to volunteer, Baumgardner said. “You have to do the right thing all the time – every time. There are very few situations where that’s true, but you live that every single day.”

Baumgardner, who is the chair of the legislature’s Joint Committee on Corrections and Juvenile Justice Oversight, said KDOC employees work to improve Kansas every day. Baumgardner, who called the KDOC the state’s largest mental health provider, said the KDOC also houses the largest population of Kansans who are lagging in reading ability and who grew up in an environment surrounded by poverty, abuse and addiction.

“Your efforts, your commitment to professionalism, your service to our state provides an essential step forward improving our communities,” Baumgardner said. “In my mind, each of you here today represent a force of good in our state. I want you to know that your safety – your personal and professional wellbeing is my top priority and concern.”

The following were selected as the KDOC’s 2018 Employees or Volunteers of the Year:

• Uniformed Employee of the Year
  Ryan McCorkle
  Corrections Officer I
  Hutchinson Correctional Facility
• Non-uniformed Employee of the Year
  Meghan Davis
  Unit Team Manager
  Topeka Correctional Facility
• Contract Employee of the Year
  Nicole R. Serpan
  Career Advisor, Barton Community College
  Ellsworth Correctional Facility
• Volunteers of the Year
  Carla Rene Polson and Gerald Allen Baxter
  Lansing Correctional Facility
  
  

The KDOC’s Volunteer of the Year Award will now be named the Carla Rene Polson & Gerald Allen Baxter Volunteer of the Year Award.

• Community Corrections Recipients
  Lori Gibbs, Sedgwick County Community Corrections (Adult)
  Jimmy Zirkle, 3rd Judicial District – Shawnee County Community Corrections (Juvenile)
• KDOC Office of Victim Services’ Champion of Justice
  Joseph Phillips
  Lansing Correctional Facility
  
  

The finalists by facility were:

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