Celebrating Excellence: 2025 Project Team Excellence Award Winners

Northwestern IT is proud to recognize the recipients of the 2025 Project Team Excellence Award (PTEA)—an annual honor that celebrates project teams whose work demonstrates exceptional collaboration, impact, and alignment with Northwestern values. This year’s co-winners reflect the breadth of work happening across Northwestern IT, from large‑scale infrastructure efforts to long‑term initiatives that shape the University’s teaching and learning environment.

2025 Project Team Excellence Award Winners

Jacobs Center Switch Room Relocation

The Jacobs Center Switch Room Relocation project highlights the essential infrastructure work that often happens behind the scenes but is foundational to the University’s operations. As part of the renovation of the Jacobs Center into the new Social Science and Global Affairs Hub—and the demolition of Coon Auditorium—a core telecommunications and network facility located in Leverone Hall needed to be fully relocated to a new home.

The original switch room had served as a critical hub for decades, supporting voice, data, radio, cellular, and video services across the Evanston campus. Relocating it was not a simple move, but a carefully sequenced, campus‑wide effort that required constructing a new, purpose‑built switch room and migrating critical infrastructure with minimal disruption. The project involved relocating network and telecommunications equipment, splicing extensive fiber optic cabling, transitioning building alarm systems to cellular connections, and installing more than 100 voice gateways in buildings across campus.

Much of the work took place during overnight maintenance windows and under a compressed timeline to keep the broader construction project on track. Success depended on close coordination among Telecommunications and Network Services, Facilities, Service Operation, IT Communications, campus partners, and external contractors.

“This project was a true test of planning, coordination, and teamwork,” said Julian Koh, director of Telecommunications and Network Services. “We were moving infrastructure that touches nearly every building on campus, under intense time constraints. The fact that we completed this work with minimal impact to the community speaks volumes about the collaboration and dedication of everyone involved.”

The PTEA committee awarded the project an exceptional score, citing its campus‑wide scope of impact and extraordinary cross‑team collaboration. While the work was not intended to introduce new technology, the committee emphasized that successfully executing such a high‑risk, high‑visibility project with minimal service disruption exemplified operational excellence.

Core team members include: Tony Adcock, Remo Briseno, Steven Dal Santo, Doug Dickerson, Chris Fabri, Ian Farrington, Chris Hart, Don Hlinsky, Victor Maiewski, Mary McLaughlin, Louis Patyk, Eli Puckett, Torvis Robinson, Tom Simms, Serena Simpson, Javier Solis, and Matt Wilson from Northwestern IT.  Mary Beth Greer and Elena Guadalupe Romero-Jensen from Northwestern Facilities and contractors Tony Kalama (Raptor) and Jeff Wozniak (Kelso Burnett).

Canvas Accessibility Project

The Canvas Accessibility Project was a multi‑year initiative focused on improving the accessibility and inclusivity of Northwestern’s digital learning environment. Launched in response to growing awareness of digital accessibility requirements and student needs, the project aimed to ensure that Canvas course sites and materials are usable by all learners—without requiring students to request accommodations after the fact.

Led by Teaching and Learning Technologies and supported by partners across the University, the project unfolded in phases. Early work focused on raising awareness among faculty and staff and establishing baseline metrics for accessibility in Canvas. The team then integrated new accessibility tools directly into Canvas to help instructors identify and remediate issues, paired with sustained communications, training, and documentation. In later phases, the project expanded to address the accessibility of documents uploaded to Canvas, including hiring document remediation specialists and developing workflows to make improvements sustainable over time.

A signature element of the project was Mission: Accessible, a creative engagement campaign that helped instructors learn and apply core accessibility skills in their own courses. Together, these efforts led to a dramatic reduction in accessibility errors across Canvas courses and helped embed accessibility into everyday teaching practices.

“Our goal was not just to fix issues, but to change the culture around digital accessibility at Northwestern,” said Victoria Getis, senior director of Teaching and Learning Technologies. “This work shows what’s possible when technology, communication, and collaboration come together with a shared commitment to student success.”

The PTEA committee highlighted the project’s proactive approach to anticipated federal accessibility requirements, its strong cross‑team and cross‑school collaboration, and its ability to scale across the University. The committee also noted that the project’s impact extends beyond Northwestern, with peer institutions adopting elements of the approach to support their own accessibility efforts.

Core team members include: Jim Stachowiak, Jacob Collins, L Dahline, Mike Dice, Victoria Getis, Dan Hoefler, Anna Luce, Abby Rosensweig, Serena Simpson, and Nick Tiemersma.

Honorable Mention: Other 2025 PTEA Nominees

Congratulations, also, to five other projects that all scored above the 7.75 threshold to be considered for the annual award. A future edition of Take 5 will spotlight these teams and their work.

• Campus Wired Data Network Refresh
• CoDEx 2025
• Graduate Student Progress to the Cloud
• Implement Redesigned Financial Aid UAPP
• March 2025 Quest Storage Upgrade, Operating System Upgrade, and Computing Refresh

Together, these award‑winning projects demonstrate the wide range of expertise and dedication across Northwestern IT—from maintaining and modernizing critical campus infrastructure to advancing a more inclusive and equitable digital learning experience. Congratulations to the project teams and partners whose work exemplifies excellence in collaboration and impact.