Distinguished Staff Awards are given to staff who have made outstanding contributions to the mission of their unit or the University. They respond creatively to challenges, maintain the highest standards in their work, establish productive working relationships, and promote a respectful and supportive workplace. Awardees receive $5,000.

Mahmoud Zubeidi - Copy Services Supervisor

Just try to keep a secret from Mahmoud Zubeidi. As the supervisor of the UW's flagship copy center in the Communications Building, he frequently handles confidential documents. "Including," Zubeidi recalls with an ironic laugh, "my own nomination for the Distinguished Staff Award."

"The people who had nominated me tried really hard to keep it a secret," says Zubeidi. "But my staff ended up with the job of making copies of the nominee's names for the selection committees. I guess I knew about the award a little earlier than I was supposed to."

Mahmoud Zubeidi

Zubeidi speaks rapidly, his voice accented with the Arabic he learned in his native Palestine. In 1974 Zubeidi left the Israeli-occupied West Bank to attend school in the United States. While a student at the University of Washington, he worked in the UW's copy shop. Zubeidi didn't graduate — "that's what happens when you have kids," he explains — but he continued to work for UW Copy Services.

"We used to run everything on an offset printing press," recalls Zubeidi. "I ran the machine. The inks were oil-based — really messy. I don't miss the old technology."

Today, four photocopiers have replaced Zubeidi's messy printing press in the basement of the Communications building. He supervises a staff of four full-time employees and several students. Zubeidi's shop is noisy and busy, with constantly whirring photocopiers, incessantly ringing phones, lines of customers, and the sharp chattering of binding machinery. There's a never-ending stream of bills to calculate, copiers to reload, and jobs to collate. Zubeidi summarizes his duties with outstretched arms and a laugh: "I'm responsible for everything."

"The last few years I've been here we go through 2 to 4 million copies a month," Zubeidi says. "We get quite a few rush jobs — especially around this time of year, with graduation ceremonies coming up. But we try our darndest to accommodate the customer whenever we can, and get their jobs out to them when they've requested it."

This dedication to customer service inspires enduring loyalty among Zubeidi's regular patrons, many of whom refuse to go anywhere else for their duplicating needs. "I work with customers that I've been dealing with for 16 or 17 years. We become very good friends."

Zubeidi's experience and expertise has also won him a few friends in high places. "I do a lot of jobs for the UW administration — a lot of rush jobs, I might add," Zubeidi says, his trademark belly laugh rising above the din of the copy shop.

Zubeidi's prickly wit and good humor isn't lost on Claire Peterson, an office support supervisor in the School of Music who nominated Zubeidi for the Distinguished Staff Award.

"Mahmoud has been delivering this kind of service to his customers for years: it's service with a smile . . . and a zinger," Peterson wrote in her nominating letter. "Mahmoud Zubeidi is outstanding as an employee, an expert in his field, a mentor, a colleague — but he's more: in a world of vanilla pudding, he is chocolate mousse with capers, anchovies, and a raw egg chaser. The University of Washington sparkles because of gems like Mahmoud."

Ken Fine, News & Information

Distinguished Staff Awards: Kellus Stone - Industrial Engineering Dave Hurley - Biology Program Laura Robinson - Rehabilitation Medicine Cynthia Fugate - UW Bothell Library