UC Riverside’s Organizational Excellence, or OE, movement held there 2nd annual OE Showcase on April 30th. OE is a grassroots initiative that seeks to create a culture that inspires all members of our campus community to improve the use of available resources so that we operate at maximum efficiency.
The events purpose was to showcase the efforts of campus groups in contributing to Organizational excellence. Each group presented their own contribution in unique ways whether they included demos, visual presentations, and participate based activities.
Along with showcase the efforts of campus, OE recognized 80 staff members for participating in their OE Certificate program. Sandra Martinez and Eric Martin were among the 80 staff members who participated in the OE Certificate Program. Both completed the first of a three-phase program designed to teach participants about collaborative leadership and project management. The program is divided into bronze, silver, and gold levels. The 80 members completed the bronze level.
Martinez, a custodial services supervisor within Housing Facilities Services, said she sought the opportunity for career development purposes, and to learn new strategies to collaborate with other departments.
Martin, project manager for Information Technology Solutions, said he too completed the bronze certificate because it’s a good investment in his career, and because the 1.5 hours he committed to the courses fit perfectly during his work schedule.
Coley said that investing in staff development is crucial to building a robust workforce and happy employees, a belief shared by both Chancellor Kim A. Wilcox and Provost Cindy Larive.
“We focus on professional development for our people because we have this belief that if we teach our people how to fish, we will have an abundance of fish at the bad crop,” said Coley.
Child Studies at UCR while participating in OE learned that clarifying roles improves efficiency.CARLOS PUMA
Among the campus groups was Child Studies @ UCR. Carole Meyer- Rieth, the child studies recruitment coordinator, spoke at the event about their experience working with Organizational Excellence.
Child Studies, after participating in OE, centralized the management of their recruitment events across all nine labs. The labs created universal policies and procedures. John Franchak says that everything is now standardized for them which increases ease through out the labs. John Franchak is an assistant professor who directs one of the nine labs dealing with perception, action and development.
The labs created an efficient collaboration between faculty, staff and students. The team built a sustainable in fracture that works towards being mutually beneficial to campus and the community.
John stated that through OE their bigger goal would be " to have people across all different walks of life in the riverside community know what it is that we are doing so that we can hopefully work with people to participate in our studies."
Another campus group that participated in the OE Showcase was Information Technology Solutions. Through their presentation they discussed re-imagining faculty development using Zoom. It was explained that Zoom is a free web conferencing software, available to anyone with a basic account to sign up. They also were issuing free pro licenses to upgrade personal accounts to the pro version so that users can host unlimited sessions.
Samantha Eastman, Information Technology Solutions Instructional Designer stated that through Zoom, "we are helping instructors who are interested in hybrid and online methods". Zoom has been a key component in increasing attendance as many can web conference in using Zoom.
Sheryl Narhara Hathaway, Assistant Director for Academic Engagement, spoke about zoom saying "We need to invest in the future and this is future proofing our classrooms".
Ron Coley speaks of the efforts of everyone saying, “We can do it in individual units, but we can’t do it without full engagement of the chancellor and the provost, and let me tell you, that is something that doesn’t happy at every campus. We are lucky and we’re getting national attention for it."
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