The 'E' in CU I&E stands for Efficiency.

But it could also stand for Education ... or Excitement ... two elements of this year's CU I&E Awards Expo!

The 2017 CU Innovation & Efficiency Awards Expo, held at System Administration offices on May 15, highlighted the impressive work of ten semi-finalist teams. Team representatives explained their best practices and answered audience questions. The Expo concluded with the announcement of final award winners:

• Grand prize (Controller's Award of Excellence - $1, 500): Jeff Darling (CU Boulder), whose Total Supply Chain Integration Model compares contractor supply chains against the state’s supply chain to ensure that CU gets the best discount structure possible for goods used during the construction process. Jeff saved the University over $500,000 during the past two years in Boulder Campus carpet work alone.
• Runner-up ($1,000): Tim Golden, Ron Ried, Jack Brubaker, and Jon Sherman (CU Boulder), whose vision of reducing traffic and improving safety on campus led them to set up centralized delivery of office supplies. Duane Tucker (Procurement Service Center) helped the team negotiate a rebate from Staples to cover their delivery costs.
• Runner-up ($1,000): Kelsey Draper (CU Boulder), whose inclusiveness initiative broke down language and technology barriers for custodial employees, promoting increased awareness of safety issues, reducing response time in emergencies, and heightening employee engagement.
• Runner-up ($1,000): Eric Hoffmeyer (CU Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus), whose interest in maximizing efficiency for his lab led him to reprogram their liquid-handling robot, enabling the machine to perform more tasks (and more complicated series of tasks) in less time.
• Runner-up ($1,000): Denise Donnelly, Mark Garcia, and Robert L. Williams (CU Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus), whose outreach efforts educated campus personnel about the differences between regulated and non-regulated medical waste, resulting in substantial cost-savings in waste pickup.

Other teams receiving semi-finalist recognition this year included:

• Chris Yankee and Allison Miller (CU Boulder), for developing the RIO (Research & Innovation Office) Bulletin, a bi-weekly communication for campus research personnel.
• Alex Holmgren (CU Boulder), for designing an event-management tool, a comprehensive system to track and report on critical event information.
• Jonathan Moore and Charles Whitecotton (CU Boulder), for implementing a mobile device management model to streamline configuration, deployment, and management of their unit's smart devices.
• Denise Donnelly and J.C. Lexow (CU Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus), for creating a generated-waste tracking system that identifies vendor billing discrepancies, saving thousands of dollars annually.
• Travis Chillemi and Normandy Roden (CU System), for redesigning online learning resources to consolidate related subject matter into individual modules that provide a variety of training delivery modalities. Travis became the Expo’s first interactive virtual participant by beaming in from Oregon to showcase the work.

(Re)Visit the Expo

Didn't make it to the Expo this year?

Check out the Expo summary video -- and mini-presentations from the semi-finalists!