CU online event planning system wins award

Showing off the Cornell online events planning and risk management system that won an honorable mention from the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) are, from left, Allen Bova, director of risk management and insurance; Joseph Scaffido, assistant director of student activities; and Roxanne Edsall-Beebe, administrative assistant in student activities. Charles Harrington/University Photography

Cornell has received honors from the Higher Education Awards Program of the National Association of College and University Business Offices (NACUBO) for an online event planning system for campus activities.

The awards program, sponsored by Barnes & Noble College Bookstores, recognizes initiatives submitted by colleges and universities that have improved the quality and reduced the cost of higher education programs and services. The awards also recognize unique revenue-generating initiatives during the 1999 calendar year.

The awards were announced at the 2000 NACUBO annual meeting July 24 in Chicago, Ill. Six institutions received monetary awards, ranging from $2,500 to $10,000, and one, Cornell, received an honorable mention for its submission, "Online Event Planning and Risk Management System," developed by Joseph Scaffido, assistant director of student activities, and Allen Bova, director of risk management and insurance at Cornell.

With the system, which features a series of automated electronic prompts and responses, students and staff members who are planning campus events are now able to register them officially with the university simply by completing and submitting a form online. A student activities staff member is then prompted via automated e-mail to review the information and identify those university officials who will need to approve the event. Following that, the officials are prompted to log onto a web page, view the list of events awaiting their review and send their approval or disapproval and other relevant comments via the automated system to the event planner. Once all approvals are secured, the planner is automatically notified via e-mail.

This system streamlines the registration process for events and facilitates a team approach to event management. Planners of campus events can now obtain approval within one to three days, whereas before the system was inaugurated, approvals often took as long as two weeks. Event registration errors also have been reduced, and there has been a 30 percent increase in advance notice of events by planners and campus groups. The system also saves the cost of printing and distributing a three-part event registration form -- since the form is now online -- and allows for better oversight and management of student- and staff-organized events on campus.

Bova credited Scaffido for the lion's share of the effort. "Building on the work of predecessors, Joe rewrote the entire program others had developed, using different software to make it more workable," he said.

Bova also thanked the following Cornell staff members for implementing the new system day to day: Kathy Zoner and Michael Blenman, Cornell Police Operations; Dan Maas and Steven Wehrspann, Environmental Health and Safety; John Gutenberger, Community Relations; John Durbin, Transportation and Mail Services; Ward Ganger, Cornell Dining; Scaffido, Catherine Holmes and Roxanne Edsall-Beebe, Student Activities; and the staff in Risk Management and Insurance.

In addition, Bova cited "many, many other folks around campus too numerous to list who actually make the program work. The dedication of these folks to the campus community and the university is unbelievable. Without them the program surely would have failed."

Cornell received 12 submissions for the NACUBO competition this year from campus departments that have instituted cost saving, process improvement or management achievement programs. A Cornell review committee rewarded nine of the departments with cash awards, ranging from $100 to $400, at an awards ceremony last spring and entered its top picks in the national NACUBO competition.

Forty-five submissions were received overall by NACUBO from various higher education institutions. The finalists were chosen by the Higher Education Awards Program Council. Yoke San Reynolds, Cornell vice president for financial affairs and comptroller, received the honorable mention for the event planning system on behalf of the university