On Feb. 1, Boise State University staff and faculty representing 40 departments across campus attended the Process Improvement Symposium. Campus rockstars were recognized and those in attendance celebrated the successes of the past year. Dave Ficks of the Boise State testing center addressed “Leveraging the Talent you already Have” and Gundy Kaupins, professor of management at Boise State, presented “Humor in the Workplace,” bringing many laughs to the event.
Eight awards were presented to both individuals and departments for their contributions in business process innovation. The winners for each category are as follows:
- Shadow Hunter Award: Awarded to an individual or group that has sought to reduce redundancy in process or data, leveraged system functionality to reduce manual tracking or other similar endeavors.
- Olgie Castillo and Eldar Sakebaev from the Idaho Small Business Development Center, who worked collaboratively on the account analysis pivot and the grant analysis pivot to produce a projection analysis spreadsheet, to identify projected totals and variances and reducing the use of shadow tracking.
- Tree Hugger Award: Awarded to an individual or group that has sought to reduce the carbon footprint in their offices, to digitize documentation or other similar solutions.
- Lori Kolasch, Nancy Knopf, Janet Eld and Lori Rodriguez from accounts payable created a paperless upload process, integrated utility uploads to the new spreadsheets, worked with outside organizations to coordinate electronic billing and payments and went paperless with W9s.
- Splendid Self-sufficiency Award: Awarded to an individual or group that has sought to improve autonomy, decentralized process or made life generally easier.
- Alex Williamson from the College of Business and Economics saw a need and filled it by meeting with each department within the college to set up customized reporting in order to create a self-sufficient business office.
- Incremental Innovation Award: Awarded to an individual or group that started a ripple and inspired efficiency in their work area.
- Corey Nelson from the School of Nursing created a process for hiring adjunct faculty to improve communication to new employees and enhance consistency between hiring managers.
- Leaps and Bounds Award: Awarded to an individual or group that has innovated across the campus community.
- Mandy Nelson, Gabriel Stephens and Mark Damm from the Registrar’s Office leveraged system functionality in PeopleSoft to generate articulation agreements for every major with the College of Western Idaho, saving hundreds of hours of work. This can now be used for agreements with other colleges and has infinitely enhanced the student process.
- Cool Collaborators Award: Awarded to a group that has banded together with a common goal to the benefit of the whole.
- Jacy Jones, Christine Savary, Kat Roemer, Barb Sciscoe, Hope Hernandez, Garth Lyon, Jillian Fice, Nycole Gabiola, Rahim Osman, plus many other individuals from the Transit Center and the Department of Public Safety modeled the continuous improvement mindset by identifying an issue and working together to improve the parking permit purchasing and delivery process. They save time, money, headaches and have increased customer service.
- Building The Bench: Awarded to a group that has created an innovative student structure to support the campus community.
- Susan Debaugh and a team from University Health Services streamlined their insurance billing process with recent changes to insurance and incorporated student employees in the process, saving time and money.
- Change Maker Award: Awarded to an individual that is recognized as a change agent, innovates and implements, and demonstrates a positive attitude.
- Ben King from Student Financial Services was instrumental in developing and implementing the activity guides in PeopleSoft that was a critical piece to have completed each term of enrollment for the student. Working with other key departments he also added an address and phone verification to keep student information up to date.
Congratulations to all the winners and thank you for being leaders in continuous improvement across the campus.
The Process Improvement Symposium will be held again next year and organizers from the UFS – Office of Continuous Improvement team hope to have nominations submitted that represent every department on the Boise State campus.