2022 Administrative Improvement Awards
Union South – Varsity Hall
Tue March 8, 2022
4:00 p.m.
Good afternoon. Thank you, Rob, for that kind introduction, and for your commitment to keeping the Administrative Improvement Award Program going strong in its 10th year.
I want to congratulate our winners and thank all of you — whether you’re in person or joining online — for being here to support and celebrate your friends and colleagues.
I also want to thank:
- Rob Cramer and his team, as well as the Office of Strategic Consulting, for putting this program together
- The Award Review Committee and Board for their hard work
- And all of the nominees and their nominators.
It’s wonderful to have this opportunity to celebrate the accomplishments of our 35 honorees who developed the five projects we recognize tonight:
- The Faculty Volunteer Recruitment Project in the Department of Surgery that’s increasing faculty engagement with medical students
- The Graduate School Fellowship Project that’s making it easier for graduate students to find, and apply for, external fellowships
- The project to streamline the emergency financial aid process, to ensure that requests are handled as quickly as possible
- The project to modernize the Undergraduate Academic Standing Process in the Registrar’s Office
- And the project at the Mead Witter School of Music to provide 130 livestreamed performances.
Let’s give them all a round of applause!
These five projects rose to the top in a very competitive field, as Rob indicated. The number of nominations says a lot about the commitment of thousands of employees across this campus to finding better, more efficient, more effective ways to do their work.
The projects range in size and scope, but they have five things in common:
- First, they all involve individuals reaching beyond their job descriptions to look at a system or a process and ask: How can we do this better?
- Second, all of them not only made an immediate difference, but also will have long-term impacts.
- Third, all involved collaboration — either among colleagues within a single department, or between units across campus. I know this was particularly challenging in a pandemic.
- Fourth, this year’s projects all directly benefit our students. And students helped design some of them. Which is good reminder of the ways in which administrative improvements can help us fulfill our mission as a public university.
- And fifth, all of these projects save time and money while also improving how we operate.
I want to thank our 2022 Administrative Improvement Award winners for sharing their talent and creativity … for bringing a spirit of entrepreneurship to their work … and for inspiring us all to find ways to do things a little better tomorrow than we’ve done them today.
Congratulations on a job well done!