Project Team Excellence Award Honorable Mentions for 2025
Last month, we celebrated the two project teams selected to receive the 2025 Project Team Excellence Award (PTEA). However, those winners were chosen from an impressive field of candidates. The year’s review process surfaced several additional projects that exemplified strong collaboration, thoughtful execution, and meaningful impact across Northwestern IT and the broader University community.
Below, we recognize the five projects that earned honorable mention from the PTEA Committee—each meeting or exceeding the standard for award eligibility and earning high marks for how their teams approached complex challenges, partnered across units, and delivered lasting value.
Graduate Student Progress (GSP) to the Cloud
The Graduate Student Progress (GSP) to the Cloud project was recognized by the PTEA Committee for its scale and ambition, as well as the coordination required to serve an exceptionally large and diverse stakeholder group. The project supports 183 graduate programs across 10 schools—an accomplishment the committee highlighted in its review.
Beyond managing this complexity, the team delivered a significantly improved platform, replacing an on-premises system with a modern, cloud-based service that enhanced flexibility, usability, and long-term sustainability. The committee scored the project especially high for impact and quality, citing meaningful improvements to user experience, workflow management, and program customization. While cloud migrations can sometimes appear routine, the committee noted that the near-seamless transition and thoughtful enhancements demonstrated a high level of care, execution, and sustained collaboration across multiple teams over a multi-year effort.
Campus Wired Data Network Refresh
The Campus Wired Data Network Refresh was a large-scale, multi‑year effort to modernize Northwestern’s wired data infrastructure—an undertaking impressive not only for its scope but also for the discipline and coordination required to bring it to completion. Spanning roughly six years and navigating pandemic-era supply chain disruptions, the project required careful orchestration of schedules, physical assets, and people across campus.
The committee scored this project especially high in flexibility, collaboration, and project management, noting that the team successfully minimized service disruptions despite the extended rollout. They also highlighted the complexity of managing physical logistics—such as equipment staging and storage—which added a layer of challenge rarely seen at this scale. While the project was not intended to introduce radically new technology (that will come as new features are enabled moving forward), the team still delivered meaningful efficiencies, including a 38 percent reduction in switches across campus, lowering energy use and maintenance costs. Given the magnitude of the work and the near‑seamless experience for the campus community, the committee strongly supported this project as an award-worthy candidate.
CoDEx 2025
The CoDEx 2025 symposium challenged the traditional boundaries of the PTEA rubric—but ultimately earned strong support from the committee for its collaborative spirit, adaptability, the significant amount of communication required with faculty and students, and growing impact on the Northwestern research community. Faced with unexpected budget reductions, the project team successfully reduced the scope of the event while preserving its core purpose: bringing researchers together to share ideas, showcase work, and build connections.
Despite these constraints, CoDEx 2025 saw a 35 percent increase in attendance over the previous year, underscoring both the event’s relevance and the team’s ability to pivot effectively. The committee praised the project’s strong organization, collaboration, and sustained year-over-year growth in engagement. While evaluating an event alongside more traditional technical implementations required flexibility in applying the rubric, the committee agreed that CoDEx exemplified excellence through partnership, careful planning, and a commitment to serving the broader University community.
Implement Redesigned Financial Aid UAPP (non‑UGRD)
The Implement Redesigned Financial Aid University Aid Application (UAPP) for non-undergraduates (non‑UGRD) project transformed a traditionally high‑touch, labor‑intensive process into a flexible self‑service model, dramatically improving the experience for financial aid offices while relieving ongoing pressure on Administrative Systems. The PTEA Committee was particularly impressed by both the quality of the project’s execution and the magnitude of its downstream impact.
The team delivered a smooth launch—with zero post‑implementation support tickets—reflecting thorough planning and close partnership with stakeholders throughout the project lifecycle. By replacing custom-built solutions with vendor‑supported tools, the project increased system flexibility and granted customer teams far greater autonomy. The committee also highlighted the team’s agile project management approach, which kept scope realistic and priorities clear while ensuring strong alignment with customer needs. Overall, the committee viewed this project as a thoughtful design and collaborative effort with measurable benefits to both technical teams and the broader University community.
March 2025 Quest Storage Upgrade, Operating System (RHEL8) Upgrade, and Computing Refresh
The March 2025 Quest Storage Upgrade, Operating System (RHEL8) Upgrade, and Computing Refresh stood out to the PTEA Committee as a textbook example of strong project management under pressure. Delivered within a narrow and inflexible timeline, the project required disciplined scope control and careful prioritization to ensure that only the most critical upgrades were included—particularly in the face of vendor delays and external dependencies.
Committee members emphasized that while the work was technically complex, the team’s success rested on fundamentals like planning, decision-making, and the application of lessons learned from prior Quest upgrade efforts. The upgrades resulted in immediate and visible benefits, including fewer service outages, enhanced security monitoring, and significant cost avoidance—most notably an estimated $500,000 saved by completing the RHEL8 migration before the prior operating system reached end of life. The committee also praised the intentional involvement of junior staff, noting that the project helped expand institutional knowledge and strengthen long-term support for the Quest service.
While only two projects ultimately received the annual Project Team Excellence Award, the PTEA Committee’s work makes clear that excellence across Northwestern IT is both widespread and sustained. The five projects highlighted here reflect the same core qualities—collaboration, adaptability, strong project management, and service to the University community—that define the award.