March 17: Judge Coordinators (JCs) and Judges will receive an email from awards@case.org giving you access to the entries.

April 28:  Deadline to indicate the winning entries, award levels, and public comments in OpenWater.

There is a considerable amount of variance from category to category based on entry counts and evaluation methodologies. In general, judges should expect to spend 20-30 minutes reviewing and scoring each entry. Additionally, judge coordinators convene their panels for 2-3 hours to develop judging/scoring criteria and to discuss and select the winning entries. 

Last year, the average entry count per category was 28.

• March 17: Judge Coordinators (JCs) and Judges will receive an email from awards@case.org giving you access to the entries.
• April 28:  Deadline to indicate the winning entries, award levels, and public comments in OpenWater.

1. Follow this link and use your CASE credentials to log into OpenWater.
2. Select 2021 Circle of Excellence Awards.
3. Select your assigned category.

** Entries will be made available by March 17, 2021.

Email awards@case.org. Please indicate your category in the subject line and include a screengrab if you are having technical difficulties.

• Please recuse yourself from judging a category if you have personally submitted an entry for that category.
• Please recuse yourself from reviewing/scoring/ discussing entries from your institution.

• Assess the entry based on the judging criteria provided for each category and any additional criteria agreed upon by the judging panel.
• We only require a single score that encapsulates all of the elements that you evaluate.
• Indicate a score of 4 or 5 if you think that the entry is worthy of an award.
• Scores of 3 indicate that an entry is middle tier and is possibly award-worthy.
• Scores of 1 or 2 indicate that an entry is not worthy of an award.

• The private comments are meant to help judges during entry evaluation and the panel discussions.
• Private comments will not be shared. 
• Only the public comments for the winning entries provided by the Judge Coordinators in the Judge Manager Panel will be posted to the website when winners are announced.

There is a considerable amount of variance from category to category based on entry counts and evaluation methodologies. In general, judges should expect to spend 20-30 minutes reviewing and scoring each entry. Additionally, judge coordinators convene their panels for 2-3 hours to develop judging/scoring criteria and to discuss and select the winning entries. 

Last year, the average entry count per category was 28.

Judging starts March 17 and ends on April 28. 

Powerpoint Deck

Powerpoint Deck

Starting on March 18

• Thursdays at 3-4 pm ET
• https://meetings.ringcentral.com/j/2024785583

Accessing and Scoring Entries

Indicating Winners with Public Comments

• Including the judge coordinator, each panel should have at least 3 judges. Some categories receive a large number of entries,  so you may want to recruit a few additional judges to be safe.
• Email your category name along with your judges’ names, email addresses, and institutions to awards@case.org.

No. Judges are not required to be employed by CASE member institutions. To access the entries for review, judges must have a CASE account. CASE accounts can be created at www.case.org/account. 

Email awards@case.org to request CASE's Volunteer Judges Roster.

• Follow this link and use your CASE credentials to log into OpenWater.
• From the left navigation, select Judge Team Manager Panel.
• Click "2021 Circle of Excellence Awards".
• Select your category then click "Manage Judges".
• Email awards@case.org if your panel is incomplete or incorrect.

Email awards@case.org with the original category name, institution, and entry title and/or number and provide your suggested category.

Email awards@case.org with the category name, institution, entry title and/or number so that we can contact the submitter and upload the missing documents, etc. in OpenWater.

Feel free to use the divide and conquer strategy to split entries across your judging panel. OpenWater calculates the average of the scores that are indicated, so blank scores are not calculated as zero.

• Schedule the meeting with your judges to deliberate and select winners.
• Make sure that your judges have completed their review/score prior to the scheduled meeting.
• From the Judge Manager Panel, sort the entries by the average scores in descending order and share the list of the top contenders with your judges (if applicable).
• Facilitate the winner selection call with your judges.
• Indicate the winners and their award levels in OpenWater.
• Add the public comments only for the winning entries.
• Email awards@case.org when you have indicated your winners and added public comments for winning entries to OpenWater. Do not forget to indicate your category in the subject line.

No. The scoring mechanism is meant only as a way to identify the strongest contenders. The scores alone should not be used to identify winning entries or the award levels.  Selecting the winning entries and the corresponding award levels should be based on the panel discussions. 

• Only Judge Coordinators have access to the Judge Team Manager Panel to identify the winning entries. 
• Based on the discussion with your judges, select each winning entry and “Set Winner” to indicate the appropriate award level.
• Add Public Comments for each winning entry.

• There is no set formula to determine how many awards to give. 
• We rely on the JCs to make sure that only deserving entries are awarded.
• There is no requirement to make awards at every level.
• Scores alone should not determine winners or award levels.

For each winning entry, we ask that the Judge Coordinators provide 3-4 sentences explaining what makes it award-worthy.

You may consider the following prompts to get you started:

• Provide three words or expressions to describe this award entry?
• What is special or unique about this award entry?
• Why did this particular submission catch your eye?
• Does this submission address an issue that you often see in advancement/education? If so, how?
• Could you use this (practice, idea, program) at your institution? How?