June 3, 2015
On the heels of being named a Distinguished Apple Program earlier this year, the myCSUNtablet initiative was awarded the Jolene Koester Team Award at this year's CSUN Annual Staff Service Awards, held on June 2, 2015 in the University Student Union. During the formal ceremony, President Dianne F. Harrison presented the award to myCSUNtablet team leaders Elizabeth Adams, associate vice president for undergraduate studies and Deone Zell, associate vice president for academic technology.
The team award recognizes campus projects or programs that best represent the university's values, promote cross-departmental collaboration within the university, and achieve distinctive results to meet the university's goals, based on four criteria:
- furthers the university mission and the department's goals through collaboration and cooperation;
- exemplifies university values such as: commitment to student success, commitment to excellence, respect for all people, alliances with community, encouragement of innovation, experimentation and creativity;
- achieves distinctive results/solutions that positively impact university operations, improve productivity, and/or reduce costs;
- forms successful collaborative relationships within the university to define and solve problems.
The myCSUNtablet initiative demonstrates these criteria through its focus on student success, efforts to reduce the cost of learning materials, and encouragement of active learning and innovative teaching. Implementing and administering the initiative took great collaborative effort, primarily through a partnership between Academic Affairs and Information Technology, but also through the support and involvement of all of CSUN's administrative divisions and the eight academic departments currently participating in the program.
Zell was thrilled that university recognized “the tremendous cross-campus teamwork that occurred to get the initiative up and running so quickly.” According to Zell and Adams, the relationships forged by partnerships across departments and functions during the rapid establishment and implementation of the initiative in its two years represent valuable social capital that will continue to pay forward as the initiative develops and expands. Zell added that she was “proud of the entire team’s willingness to innovate and take a huge step forward to meet the needs of our increasingly mobile student population.”
Other campus projects and programs nominated in the Koester Team Award category for 2015 were: the College of Science & Mathematics Science Shop, the CSUN Shine from Within Advisory Committee, the Department of Biology Office Staff, the Farmer’s Market, the Institute for Sustainability Working Groups, and the Student Veterans Education Benefit Reporting Project.