Salesforce.org Honors Higher Education Trailblazers with the First-Ever Summit Awards for Excellence in Higher Education

At the 5th Annual Higher Ed Summit, Salesforce.org announced the recipients of its first-ever Summit Awards, which honor trailblazers in higher education. Arizona State University, University of Florida and University of Wisconsin-Extension were selected by nearly 1,000 members of the higher ed community and Salesforce.org leadership for excellence in student success, operational efficiency and innovation. Meet the winners!

Excellence in Student Success Award: Arizona State University

The Excellence in Student Success Award recognizes a college or university that is using Salesforce to blaze new trails to student success.

Arizona State University created the “My ASU” portal to give students a single online entry point for getting help—whether it’s through a self-service knowledge base, making a phone call, chatting with someone online, or logging a case to request an answer to a question.

Excellence in Operational Efficiency Award: University of Florida

The Excellence in Operational Efficiency Award recognizes a college or university that is using Salesforce to streamline processes and maximize adoption in one or more areas of the campus.

University of Florida’s School of Pharmacy built a student-facing web portal with Salesforce that allows students to enroll in courses more efficiently, while at the same time allowing administrators to predict enrollment numbers and react accordingly. The portal has reduced staff processing time from 600 hours to 300 hours annually, and reduced students’ time registering each semester from two minutes to 30 seconds.

The Dave Perry Excellence in Innovation Award: University of Wisconsin-Extension

The Excellence in Innovation Award recognizes a college or university that is using Salesforce to fuel innovation in recruiting, student success, advancement, marketing, community and/or engagement.

University of Wisconsin – Extension was selected for its success in creating a Student Engagement System (SES) that includes capabilities to manage marketing and recruiting, admissions, registration and enrollment, financial aid, social engagement, student services, graduation, and more.

This award has special meaning to our Ohana (which means family in Hawaiian culture) as it’s named in honor of Salesforce.org employee, Dave Perry, who recently passed away. He was a technical architect who made significant contributions to the development of Higher Education Data Architecture (HEDA) and to the Salesforce higher ed community. If you’d like to make a donation to honor his memory, please visit: https://www.gofundme.com/dave-perry-memorial-fund.

Congratulations to our inaugural winners, trailblazers in education who are transforming the student experience.