As a board member of the League of Innovation, Sinclair Community College has hosted its annual Innovation of the Year Awards. This year’s winners include Barbara Tollinger, Robert Sherman and Ken Hook, for the “SCOPE Help Desk” project.
Amanda Romero, who serves as the chair of the Innovation of the Year Committee said to win the award, the project must be original, unique, be compliant with at least one of Sinclair’s fundamental plans, no more than five years old, not submitted twice within that five year period and have the ability to be duplicated for other colleges to follow.
“There’s been many times when it’s been both faculty and staff, it’s not one or the other. There’s a lot of collaborative efforts among faculty and staff to develop some great innovative projects,” Romero said. “Many dealt with student services, many dealt directly in the classroom, others have dealt with servicing our part-time faculty members … more times than not, it’s about servicing the students.”
The SCOPE (Students Correcting Open-door PC Emergencies) lab provides the Sinclair community with computer support, provided by students completing their capstone requirements in the CIS program, and qualifying volunteers.
“The quality of student education has been improved through the real world, hands-on work of the students during their service in the SCOPE help desk,” she said in an email interview. “Rather than just hearing about technology in a lecture and experiencing a few examples in a homework assignment, SCOPE students perform daily troubleshooting and other IT services. They learn real-time, industry-relevant problem solving skills in a host of areas.”
She added that the committee made their decision based on the “high level of experiential learning and student participation (authentic, hands-on work experience), support of the college’s core strategies and Completion by Design initiative, student preparedness for the workforce, computer support for the students, faculty and staff (delivered more than 4,300 different services), collaborative efforts between the BIS and CIS departments, huge cost savings for the ‘customers’ and college as well as volunteer efforts beyond the campus community,” she said.