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 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

The Judging panel construct in part relies on each District identifying 14 Judge recruiters - one for each of the 14 Circle of Excellence award areas. For assigned award areas, each Judge Recruiter:

• Recruits one judge per category from within their district. Multiple categories can be assigned if requested.
• Recommends judges who can serve as lead judges
• Can volunteer themselves to judge for their district

March 26: Judges and Lead Judges will receive an email from awards@case.org giving you access to the entries.

May 28:  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 26: Judges and Lead Judges will receive an email from awards@case.org giving you access to the entries.
• May 28:  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 2025 Circle of Excellence Awards.
3. Select your assigned category.

** Entries will be made available by March 26, 2025.

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.
• 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.

We strongly encourage judges to post their thoughts in the "Shared Judge Comments" section for each entry that they judge.

These shared comments are:

• Shared among the members of each category's judging panel.
• Meant to help judges during entry evaluation and the winner selection discussions.
• Treated as private.
•  Not shared with anyone outside of the judging panel.

Only the public comments for the winning entries provided by the Lead Judges  in the Judge Manager Panel will be posted to the website when winners are announced.

There is no way to add private comments that are not shared among your fellow panelists. You may consider exporting your scores to excel and capturing your private notes offline. 

It is more than likely that the nominator has provided hyperlinks instead of pdf attachments. Scroll down to the hyperlink section.

Feel free to email awards@case.org with the category in the subject line and reference the entry# if attachments are indeed missing. We may need to follow up with the nominator.

Lead Judge Training Recording

Lead Judge Training Powerpoint Deck

Judge Training Recording

Judge Training Powerpoint Deck

Missed the live judge training? No worries.  Click here for the recording.

Missed the live lead judging training? Not to worry. Click here for the recording.

Starting on March 27

• Thursdays at 3-4 pm ET
• https://case-org.zoom.us/j/7921364767

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 awards@case.org if you have any questions.

 The 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 (3)
• Communications (9)
• Design (7)
• Engagement (3)
• Fundraising (10)
• Leadership (3)
• Magazines (9)
• Marketing (11)
• Photography (3)
• Publications (6)
• Special Events (7)
• Videos  (13)
• Writing (7)

Judge Recruiters are asked to secure one judge for each category within their assigned award area. For example, the DI Judge Recruiter for the Magazine award area should recruit nine (9) judges from throughout DI  - one for each of the 9 Magazine categories. A judge recruit can participate on multiple panels if there is a desire.

Please try to mix it up a bit - recruit from 4-year, community colleges, independent schools, and outside of academia.

Judges and their institutions are free to submit entries to any category.

Category Recusals: We ask that volunteers not judge categories that they anticipate submitting entries themselves.

Entry Recusals: Volunteers are allowed to judge a category with submissions from their institutions, but must recuse themselves from reviewing, scoring, or discussing the entries from their institutions.

Judges who submit an entry in their assigned category will be invited to judge a different category in the same award area. 

Yes, however Judge Recruiters will have access to the FY24 CoE Judge Recruitment SS which will indicate which categories are more suited to larger judging panels.

Consider encouraging your “extra” judges to add themselves to the Volunteer Signup Form and indicate other categories that may be interested in. You can always keep them as an alternate to backfill for possible attrition or any gaps that we may have at judging.

Yes, a volunteer can judge two categories if they are aware of,  and understand the challenges: 

• Final entry counts for the Circle of Excellence are a bit hard to determine and vary from year to year. We can’t be sure how many entries will be submitted within each category. There is a possibility of judging multiple categories with a large number of entries. 
• The global nature of the panels will require flexibility with scheduling the winner selection calls. Having to participate on multiple panels may be challenging, especially if they are scheduled at odd hours.

If your judge understands the challenges, feel free to assign them to multiple categories.

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. 

Judge recruiting is a rolling process and we are always looking to fill our panels with additional volunteers interested in getting involved with CASE! If you are added to a panel after March 26, please reach out to awards@case.org and we will help you get caught up to speed. Please indicate in the subject line of your email what award area/category you are volunteering on.

The Awards team will select a lead judge for each category from among judges who volunteer and/or are recommended by judge recruiters and CASE regional staff. 

The judge leaders will be invited to participate in Lead Judge Training in February.

Once judging launches on March 26, 2025, you will be able to:

• Follow this link and use your CASE credentials to log into OpenWater.
• From the left navigation, select Judge Team Manager Panel.
• Click "2025 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.

For those categories that receive 50+ entries, we have designed the judging process to be three rounds:

Round 1:  Each entry will be reviewed and scored by at least 3 judges to identify the truly competitive nominations

Round 2: The entries with the top scores from Round 1 will advance to the second round where all the judges will 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

Once the lead judge has determined the score cutoff point for Round 1, we will advance the applicable entries to the second round of scoring for the full panel’s consideration.

Lead judges can work with their panels to agree on a different timeline as long as winners are identified no later than May 28th.

• Round 1 scores TBD
• Round 2 scores TBD
• Winners identified with public comments on or before May 28th

From the judge tean manager panel in OpenWater, click Manage Judges  to see your judges' names and email addresses. Here are some sample letters.

• Sample Letter 1
• Sample Letter 2
• Sample Letter 3

• 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 awards@case.org 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?

Feel free to proceed without 100% participation on the winner-selection call if your judges have scored and added their comments to all of their assigned entries, and they are comfortable with what the panel decides during the winner-selection call.

The shared comments of the absent judges can be used to inform the final decision.

Feel free to proceed to engage your seated judges.

We will continue working with the districts and regions to recruit judges for open seats, prioritizing the larger categories.

We will notify you if/when new judges are added to your panels.