The Academic Affairs committee thanked San Jose State University academic affairs division staff members for another year of hard work with the annual staff appreciation breakfast Nov. 1.

At the breakfast, staff members who brought donations of canned goods to give to Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties, received raffle tickets to be entered into a drawing for a prize from their college dean.

During his remarks, Dean Charles Bullock, of the College of Applied Sciences and Arts, thanked the college staff for continuing to work hard year after year.  Molly Marquez, of Justice Studies, won the gift basket for the College of Applied Sciences and Arts. The gift basket included gourmet popcorn and seasonings, movie tickets and a restaurant gift card.

To increase the amount of donations for Second Harvest, the college or departments that collected the most canned goods were rewarded with a half a day of volunteer time from Deputy Provost Andrew Feinstein. The College of Social Sciences won the competition as they did last year and will be able to assign Feinstein to tasks in their office for four hours.

After all the deans and AVPs completed the raffle and remarks, staff members were treated to entertainment from Comedy Sportz, an Improv group. For one skit, they asked each table to come up with a line they often use in their offices and the comedians worked the lines into a funny routine. Some of the lines included, “No, I didn’t read the directions” and “It’s in the syllabus.”

In addition to the individual college raffles, the event planning committee received donations of other raffle prizes for a staff-wide raffle.  Some of the prizes included tickets to San Jose Sharks games, gift certificates to downtown restaurants, cookies and cakes, and more.