Elizabeth Weldon Email and Phone Number

The Human Resources team at Vulcan Materials serves as a strategic business partner with the company's employees in many ways, such as advising on company policies and best practices, developing and organizing training programs, managing individual employee performance and career development, recruiting and onboarding, and promoting an inclusive work environment. As an HR Generalist, I directly support these various functions. Specifically, I am responsible for supporting 1,800+ employees at all levels of the organization with questions, concerns, or processes regarding but not limited to recruiting, onboarding, compensation and benefits, payroll, employee relations, performance management, succession planning, and company policies. In order for me to be successful in my role, it is vital that I can easily build relationships and establish myself as a trusted resource. This is a hands-on role that demands efficiency, integrity, and professionalism. As an HR Generalist, I work directly under a Human Resource Manager, who provides guidance and direction but also expects me to have a high level of personal initiative and the ability to work independently with limited direction.

As an intern, I assisted the HR team and had the opportunity to learn about how an HR department operates within a large company. One of my projects involved redesigning the recruiting and onboarding process to make it more efficient and successful. My goal was to reduce the time it takes for new positions to be filled. I created a Google Form that hiring managers could submit to recruiters in order to request a new job requisition. This significantly improved the communication between hiring managers and the recruiting team and reduced the amount of time to post a job. I also helped interview candidates, attended Southeast Division meetings for HR, assisted with drug and alcohol testing at plant sites, and met with many plant and area managers to gain direct exposure to the mining industry and learn more about the jobs that make up this company. After a month in this role, I was promoted to a full-time Human Resources position at Vulcan.

I worked for the Director of Human Resources at Davidson College during my final semester of school. I assisted with a wide variety of projects, including an audit of the office's immigration files, developing flow charts for the hiring process and sexual harassment policy, increasing Davidson HR's social media presence, and redesigning the Spirit of Davidson Service Award for staff members. Through this internship, I gained exposure to compensation and benefits, as well as issues surrounding employee relations. This opportunity also allowed me to further my communication, teamwork, and Microsoft Office skills.

As a student-athlete, I balanced an academic course load with a 20 hr/week swimming commitment, which consisted of morning swim practice, afternoon swim practice, weight lifting sessions, and weekend swimming competitions. I competed on the Varsity scoring team for Davidson in the 200 freestyle, 500 freestyle, and 1,650 freestyle at the 2015, 2016, and 2017 Atlantic 10 Conference Championships. During the 2015-2016 A-10 Championships, my teammates and I earned 1st place in the 800-yard freestyle relay and set a new Conference record.The experience of being a student-athlete has taught me time-management skills, how to prioritize my work, and how to communicate with both professors and coaches. Furthermore, I have learned how to be a productive teammate and leader within the team. As a senior member of our distance group, I helped lead our underclassmen members through our rigorous training schedule, ensured our group's work ethic and attitude was in line with team standards, and served as a liaison between swim team members and the coaches/captains. Finally, my membership on this athletic team provided me with the ability to set, work towards, and achieve long term goals.

This prestigious research grant was awarded to me so I could continue the project I began during the previous summer under the Abernethy grant. I sought to better understand how odor, pictures, and words varied in the way they cued autobiographical memories in young and older adults. My goal for the research project was to replicate my previous experiment, with several improvements in the methodology. Similar to the summer before, I was responsible to work a forty hour work week and collaborate with other members of the research team. As this was my second summer of research with the Cognitive Aging lab, I was considered a leader on the team and was in charge of making sure other members were following lab protocol correctly. Furthermore, I was also seen as the first person that lab members could bring their questions to before taking them to the Principle Investigator (PI). I helped lab members develop their methodology, prepare the materials for their experiment, and taught them how to use SuperLab.At the conclusion of my study, I organized all of my data into an Excel spreadsheet and used my knowledge of statistics to analyze the results. I then created a poster to explain my study, and presented it at the North Carolina Cognition Conference in March of 2017.

I served custard treats to customers, managed the register, and maintained a clean working environment. In addition, I interacted and preserved positive relations with customers by responding to questions and issues. Whit's allowed me to utilize my people skills, work ethic, and leadership potential to be a successful employee. I learned how to work well under pressure, handle and resolve tense situations, and serve as a boost in moral to fellow employees.

Alongside Cognitive Psychology professor, Dr. Multhaup, I conducted independent experimental research on how words, pictures, and odors trigger autobiographical memories in young and older adults. I was in charge of developing the methodology, research materials (consent forms, debriefing forms, test-order list, script, etc.) and experiment on computer using a program called SuperLab). I spent the summer recruiting participants via phone calls, flyers, and social media, and then running them through the experiment. The experiment took about an hour per participant and utilized multiple computer systems and various types of stimuli. Throughout the data collection I was met and dealt with many challenges that taught me a great deal about experimental research. Once data collection was complete, I entered the data into Microsoft Excel and analyzed it. I then compiled information from my research into a poster, which I presented at Davidson College's Summer Research Symposium.