Past recipients and a short description of the innovation are listed below.
2024
Curtis Iburg, manager of sterilization services in the College of Dentistry, led a major renovation of the College of Dentistry’s instrument processing and sterilization area, with the aim of encouraging better workflow and support for future growth. “His innovations in workspace are a valuable asset to the greater University and demonstrates that the most important people to be involved in a space renovation are those that use the area because they can see how the facility can better function and how it can be designed for future needs,” said Kecia Leary, associate dean of clinics.
2022
Ben Anzelc, Facilities and Safety Coordinator in the School of Art and Art History, identified a gap in needing to provide students more equipment-specific training and a need to be able to accurately track who has done that training and whether they are qualified to work on a piece of equipment. This is challenging due to the hundreds of students enrolled in the program and that students may be exposed to new equipment and hazards every semester. Ben’s innovation included developing safety specific content for individual online courses and partnering with IT to automatically enroll students into the needed course(s), track their completion progress, provide reports, and email them and their instructors with reminders, if necessary, to complete the training. The other unique innovation is that this information can be tied to a student’s ID card. If they scan in to use a particular classroom or studio and have not completed all the relevant training, then the instructor will not allow them to use the facility until their training is up to date.
Emily Finzel, Associate Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, led efforts both within the University of Iowa and nationally to develop best practices for field safety protocols, including addressing a gap in safety oversight for field-camp-like scenarios where individuals are spread out over a wide area day after day. Dr. Finzel collaborated with several internal University departments including Risk Management and the Office of the General Counsel to draft a Pre-Activity Statement for each field trip. The statement requires instructors to consider potential risks and mitigation strategies. She also compiled a Field Safety Best Practices document to outline University and College of Liberal Arts and Sciences guidelines and forms required for planning field courses and field-based research. On a national scale, Dr. Finzel created a field safety forum for instructors of summer field camps. She arranged for a National Outdoor Leadership School Wilderness First Aid course for individuals where Emergency Medical Service response could take approximately 8 hours, such as in field scenarios.
2021
Christine Cifra MD, MS, clinical associate professor in CCOM's Department of Pediatrics,
2020
Edward Gillan, Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry, leads the department in training students and staff in safety protocols and establishing a strong and ingrained culture of safety and respect for potential hazards. Ed instituted a mandatory, annual departmental "all-hands" safety meeting to review best practices and departmental safety improvements, as well as to present important/recent case studies that illustrate the need for vigilance. He developed and regularly conducts safety orientations for new grad students, teaching assistants, and summer undergraduate researchers. Ed integrated graduate students from each faculty member's research group into a team of safety liaisons who collaborate to communicate about safety issues they encounter and how best to handle them. As one example. every graduate student now presents a “safety minute” before seminar presentations they give in our department that addresses a relevant safety-related feature of the topic that they will be presenting.