CIC Receives Award

The Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), a consortium of the Big Ten universities and the University of Chicago, in January was named as a recipient of the first Leveraging Excellence Award of the National Consortium for Continuous Improvement in Higher Education (NCCI).

The award recognizes initiatives where effective academic and administrative practices have been successfully implemented beyond one department, campus, or institution.

The CIC was honored for its large-scale and significant resource sharing and collaboration across independent research universities.
In its award application, the CIC emphasized how its wide range of activities has helped its member universities realize benefits that would not have been possible if acting alone.

“Each CIC university realizes a significant return on investment – in actual cash savings on purchases, as well as opportunities to access services and resources available at sister institutions,” wrote CIC director Barbara McFadden Allen. “Purchasing contracts alone typically return $250,000 per year in savings to the campuses; high-quality, unique academic offerings are open to member universities; professional development and peer networking opportunities abound; and library and computing resources are leveraged to increase overall impact and availability.”

Allen accepted the award during a February ceremony in San Diego, held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the American Council on Education.

“This award honors institutions and organizations that have created innovative planning and decision-making processes, and have leveraged their best practices in order to help other colleges, universities and institutions become more efficient and improve their operational excellence,” said University of Kentucky President Lee T. Todd, Jr., chair of the judging panel. “But this award also recognizes a new trend in higher education. It acknowledges higher education efforts that resonate with business leaders, legislators and donors. Such relationships play an increasingly significant role in higher education today, as colleges and universities strive to build collaborative partnerships that add value to the various publics in which they serve.”

The NCCI is committed to advancing administrative and academic excellence in higher education by identifying, promoting, supporting and sharing effective organizational practices among member institutions. Its membership consists of more than 600 individual representatives from approximately 90 member institutions. The Leveraging Excellence Award Program is sponsored by the Follett Higher Education Group.

The deadline for the 2009 Leveraging Excellence Award is Oct. 1. For more information, go to http://www.ncci-cu.org/.