The new judging panel construct relies on each District identifying 14 Judge Recruiters - one for each of the 14 Circle of Excellence award areas. For their assigned award area, each Judge Recruiter: 

• Recruits one judge/category from within their district
• Recommends judges who can serve as lead judges
• Can volunteer themselves to judge for their district
• May be asked to serve as a judge or lead judge for the Best of District/Region (local) round

Notes:

The Judge Coordinator role no longer exists.

The category count/award area ranges between 3-14 categories.

Based on the recommendations made by the Judge Recruiters and CASE staff,  CASE Awards will select one Lead Judge for each judging panel. The Lead Judge will: 

• Lead the judging process for their assigned category
• Keep judges on schedule, answer questions about recusals, judging/scoring criteria
• Convene judges (virtually) to select winners
• Provide 2-3 sentences about why winning entries were selected
• Provide 2-3 sentences about the pool of entries in general

Note: The Judge Coordinator role no longer exists.

There will be nine judges on the panels for the 100 Circle of Excellence categories - one judge from each of the eight districts and one judge from either of the three CASE regions. One of the judges will be named the lead judge. The Global Judges and Lead Judge will:

• Review and score assigned entries (Scoring entries using the OpenWater awards platform will now be required)
• Participate in discussion(s) to help select the winners

Note: Global judges may be asked to judge their district's/region's local round to identity the Best of District/Region

March 23: Judges and Lead Judges will receive an email from [email protected] giving you access to the entries.

May 11:  Deadline for Lead Judges 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 10-20 minutes reviewing and scoring each entry. Additionally, lead judges convene their panels for 1-2 hours to discuss and select the winning entries.

Note: The Circle of Excellence has been re-envisioned so it is hard to predict the number of entries that will be received this year. 

• March 23: Judges and Lead Judges will receive an email from [email protected] giving you access to the entries.
• May 11:  Deadline for Lead Judges 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 2022 Circle of Excellence Awards.
3. Select your assigned category.

** Entries will be made available by March 23, 2022.

Email [email protected]. 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.
• Score the entries based on each individual judging criteria on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the highest score.
• OpenWater automatically calculates the average score of the judging panel. The maximum score possible is 50.

• 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.

Powerpoint Deck

Starting on March 31

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

The new judging panel construct relies on each District identifying 14 Judge Recruiters - one for each of the 14 Circle of Excellence award areas. The assigned award area determines how many judges a Judge Recruiter is to secure. Below is the  list of the award areas with their corresponding category counts, ie the number of judges needed from each district.

• Advancement Services (4)
• Alumni Relations (4)
• Communications (10)
• Design (7)
• Engagement (3)
• Fundraising (11)
• Leadership (3)
• Magazines (9)
• Marketing (11)
• Photography (3)
• Publications (6)
• Special Events (7)
• Videos  (14)
• Writing (8)

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 [email protected] to request CASE's Volunteer Judges Roster.

All judges should be recruited by Feb. 23, 2022. This provides adequate time for the onboarding process which includes judge training and OpenWater registration. Global judging will launch on March 23, 2022.

• Follow this link and use your CASE credentials to log into OpenWater.
• From the left navigation, select Judge Team Manager Panel.
• Click "2022 Circle of Excellence Awards".
• Select your category then click "Manage Judges".
• Email [email protected] if your panel is incomplete or incorrect.

We strongly suggest that Judge Recruiters' districts match the districts for which they are assigned to recruit. This will make it easier for you to identify judges from within your assigned districts. Please decline the invitation to serve as judge recruiter if you are not in that district. Feel free to contact [email protected] if you have any questions.

The new judging panel construct was designed to have one judge from each district on each of the 100 judging panels. Recruiting is a district-specific activity. Please stay within your districts when recruiting judges for your assigned award area. 

Email [email protected] with the original category name, institution, and entry title and/or number and provide your suggested category.

Email [email protected] 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.

For those categories that receive a lot of entries, we are designing the judging process to be three rounds:

Round 1: The entries will be divided equally across the 8-9 judges in the panel - The judges review and score the entries (weed out the weak/ identify the truly competitive)

Round 2: The entries with the top scores from Round 1 move to the second round where all the judges review and score them (identify the strongest contenders)

Round 3: The Lead Judge facilitates the winner selection call. The top contenders from Round 2 are considered for awards

• 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.
• 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 [email protected] when you have indicated your winners and added public comments about the 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 Lead Judges 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 Lead Judges 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 Lead Judges provide 2-3 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?