Everything's coming up staff all over the place this week.

On May 11, University Communications launched its Staff Works feature, coinciding with the Thank Goodness for Staff picnic. And today (May 13) we add a slide show from the picnic — a midday event that drew about 5,000 people to the Hutchison Intramural Field.

TGFS comes once a year, whereas Staff Works will be a recurring feature, year-round, showcasing and celebrating UC Davis employees and their invaluable contributions to our campus and its mission.

We introduce the project here with an audio slide show, and we will be adding photos and audio on a regular basis — on the Dateline UC Davis website: dateline.ucdavis.edu.

The slide show features our staff in classrooms, labs and offices, in the central mailroom and the Coffee House kitchen, and at our athletics facilities. We also highlight our police and firefighters, our horseshoer, and the people who keep the Unitrans fleet running.

We take our jobs seriously — motivated by the pride we feel for our university’s mission of teaching, research and public service, and knowing that each of us, whatever we do, plays a part in that mission.

The Staff Works photos that you see here are the work of Karin Higgins and Cheng Saechao, university photographers. Higgins also collected the audio, put the slide show together and served as narrator.

Our photographers are always out and about, on assignment, all over — and always looking for more picture stories to tell through Staff Works. Have a suggestion for a great Staff Works tale or a great employee? Please let us know by e-mail dateline@ucdavis.edu (please put Staff Works in the subject line).