Service Excellence Program Recognizes UB Staff for Providing, Improving Service

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- UB's Service Excellence Program began 15 years ago as a way of insuring that staffers in University Services were not losing sight of the unit's mission.

"I was vice president of university services; we were in the service business," recalls Robert J. Wagner, senior counselor to the president and retired senior vice president, in recounting the history of the Service Excellence program. "What I was trying to do was to insure we all were thinking in those terms, and giving not only thought to that, but some focus to that. It's very easy to say, 'of course I'm in the service business,' but you're going to have to do something beyond just saying it."

Conversations with the associate vice presidents and other colleagues convinced Wagner that it would be useful to begin a recognition program for staff members whose projects focused on improving service.

The resulting Service Excellence program has experienced dramatic growth since its humble beginnings 15 years ago, Wagner notes. During the first 10 years of the program, a total of 43 projects were recognized; 42 projects were recognized in 2003 alone, he points out.

Projects in those early years were modest in scale and narrow in focus, Wagner says. With the inclusion last year of Service Excellence under the Institute for Administrative Quality Improvement (IAQI) umbrella and the addition of Student Affairs and Athletics to a mix that includes the Office of the Chief Information Officer as well as University Services, projects this year are broader and more interdisciplinary in scope, indicating that "opportunities to improve service cut across a variety of areas," he says.

In addition, the program, which originally began as an initiative of the senior vice president and associate vice presidents, has moved in the past three or four years to being an effort directed by those who are submitting projects, Wagner says.

'One of the strengths of this (program) is that there is a lot of ownership by people in these three organizations. This is something people do and want to do and think about and innovate on and improve on," he says. "To me, that's a sign that this is now a mature program and activity-when the organization and the people in it can self-direct it. It's better because people care."

Although the Service Excellence program does name large- and small-scale projects of the year, all projects nominated for the program are recognized at the annual Service Excellence Celebration awards ceremony, held this year on June 10. Each project is described and all participants are acknowledged and receive a certificate.

Among those projects recognized at this year's celebration were the ASCIT Appraisal Project (small-scale project of the year), DAR Client/Server and CAS Implementation (large-scale project of the year), FSA Ellicott Complex Renovations: New Food Court and the Iraq Crisis Webliography.

"When you do 40 of those projects (at an awards ceremony), you really get a sense of what's going on because you see it all come together and see all the work of all these people," Wagner says. "People appreciate the fact that they're being recognized, that they're being thanked. People also begin to see collectively what's going on (at the university)," he says, adding that the celebration -- and the booklet that's produced -- provide an opportunity for members of the campus community to see programs in other areas that might offer information or solutions to problems or issues they're facing.

Moreover, the Service Excellence program gives "a sense of things broader than university services and administration," he says. For example, the University Libraries were recognized this year for the "UB Authors Database" project that involved the development of a database of UB faculty and alumni book authors. "You could say, "what does that have to do with University Services,' but it has something to do with our service to the faculty," Wagner notes. "It's also a community-building tool."

Kerri Cabana Jasen, who on July 1 assumed the position of chair of the Service Excellence Task Force, which oversees the Service Excellence program, echoed Wagner's comments about the importance of recognition.

"I've been submitting projects (for Service Excellence recognition) for some time," says Jasen, senior systems consultant for the chief information officer. "A lot of my job entails recognition and I thought, 'what a great way to get these 60 names out there.'

"This was the public recognition; this was something where you could really get the word out to the rest of the community about what was going on and who was involved," she says. "People are just so appreciative that you took the time to nominate a project (for Service Excellence recognition)."

The Service Excellence Celebration -- the focal point of a program that also features several assemblies during the academic year that highlight service excellence within the university -- had kept to the same format for many years, notes Laura Barnum, associate athletic director for internal operations in the Division of Athletics and past chair of the Service Excellence Task Force. Initially, the format was rather dry and more competitive, with monetary awards being given to the first-through-third-place projects, she said, adding that more recently with the celebration of the 10-year anniversary of the program in 2000, the format moved to a wider recognition of projects.

Barnum says that when she became task force chair in 2002, she recruited Jasen to become a member of the group. Jasen immediately lobbied to revamp the celebration format, Barnum recalls.

Many new members joined the task force that year, she adds, which "rejuvenated" the process.

She says that up to that point, there had been two distinctive concepts for the celebration-the competitive aspect and the wider recognition-and it had been a "one or the other" approach.

"We looked at that and said, 'well, how can we make as many people happy as we can and bring a little of both to our celebration?'" she says.

With the 2002 celebration, the task force began honoring top projects and projects of the year, as well as recognizing all projects submitted.

The task force wanted to do something extra-special at that celebration, Barnum says, so members put together a video, soliciting the advice of Paul Vecchio, assistant athletic director for communications, who creates similar videos for the annual athletics banquet.

The Service Excellence video -- which the task force has dubbed "the Academy Awards of UB" -- featured the leaders of the top projects submitted for Service Excellence recognition talking about their efforts, what they learned during the course of the project and the information they would share with others.

"We've taken something that could have been just a hum-drum graphic on the screen and used the video to bring the projects to life," Jasen says.

After the video, which was contracted out, was shown at that celebration, staffers affiliated with Instructional Technology Services offered to put together the 2003 video in-house at no cost, Barnum says.

In the next year, the task force will continue to review the mission of the program and the nomination process to insure that it's inclusive of all the units and that all projects nominated "really represent excellence in those areas," Jasen says.

Moreover the group will consider the role and mission of Service Excellence as part of IAQI, Barnum adds. "The institute is all about recognizing quality across the campus; they work on a lot of projects," she says, noting that bringing Service Excellence under that umbrella "seems to be a good fit."