A heartfelt congratulations to the recipients of the inaugural Provost’s Organizational Excellence Award from the Office of Student Life. Alex Hart, Celina Davis, Luis Perez Espindola and Ketzia Abramson’s proposal to digitize the property review process for dormitory check-out was selected from 18 submissions from across the University this Spring.
The award of $20,000 will streamline the check-in/check-out processes for students and furthermore eliminate the need for physical space to store paper records. The award is made possible by the gift of a thoughtful donor who created the award “in alignment with the University’s Strategic Plan initiative for Organizational Excellence, to inspire new, innovative strategies to transform systems and processes across campus for enhancements in organizational effectiveness and efficiency and improved processes.”
Because the award explicitly encourages collaboration between faculty, staff, and/or administration, the Chief Advancement Officer and Vice President, Matt Parlow, worked with the Long Range Planning Council chair, Michael Wood, to assemble a diverse committee of evaluators that included Nina LeNoir, Gordon Babst, Pradip Shukla, Chris Hutchinson, Lauri Mantooth, Daniele Cobb and Michael Wood.
In reviewing all the submissions, the subcommittee members were impressed with both the urgency of nearly every proposal and certain commonalities across proposals. Multiple proposals focused on recruitment, contract workflow, pedagogical initiatives and structures, staff support, as well as material support for units. Aside from selecting a winning proposal, the committee also bundled certain proposals and reached out to relevant administrators to call attention to other areas of organizational excellence articulated in the many worthy proposals that were otherwise not chosen for an award.
A second award is planned for 2025 and those interested in submitting a proposal should look for announcements this Fall Semester.
