UVU’s SMARTLab won its fourth Best of State award in a row for the Best Analytical Lab in Utah, and its first Best of State Statue (BOSS) award for the entire category of Science and Technology. In normal circumstances, an awards ceremony would be held, with Miss Utah and Miss Teen USA presenting the award on stage. Due to COVID-19, the award was presented privately to the SMARTLab staff.
“I feel a debt of gratitude to Paul Dishman and Dale Jolley who founded the SMARTLab,” said Steven Huff, marketing chair of the WSB. “Paul founded the lab and hired Dale who has been directing the lab for six years now. This award is based on the foundation built by all of that effort and innovation.”
“I’m really pleased about this award because it took four years for us to get to this point,” said Dale Jolley, director of the SMARTLab. “This was an accumulation of four years in a row that we won this award, and this is the pinnacle of the category against tough competition. It took a lot of people to get us here, and I’m proud of everybody.”
“We’re excited with the work going forward,” said Dustin Harding, head of research at the SMARTLab. “We have the Shaduf institute being the marketing end of the SMARTLab, performing marketing research here. We’re continually trying to do more research that’s applicable to countless businesses and distribute our research to business leaders so that they can act and make better decisions.”
“The lab started out with cutting-edge technology and practices, and as we move into the future, having cutting-edge equipment and practices won’t be enough to drive innovation,” said Huff. “That’s where the Shaduf Institute comes in. It’s a natural fit to build this out of the SMARTLab where it will now be innovating in terms of how we disseminate good business thinking to the world. There are a lot of people who have mental models that aren’t completely correct as they manage their companies, and we’re disseminating research that if leaders pay attention to, will give them a significant competitive advantage. Think of it as SMARTLab 2.0. The past has been incredible, which this award represents, but the future is going to be no less incredible.”
Since launching in November 2014, the SMARTLab has educated over 5,000 unique corporate executives and students on cutting-edge neuromarketing methodologies and biometric testing techniques through over 225 tours and over 200 corporate and academic studies. UVU’s SMARTLab has enabled students to get hands-on knowledge and experience with biometric testing techniques, which has led them to incredible employment and academic opportunities.
“I’m just thrilled to be a part of this team,” said Westin Smith, director of content
and marketing for the SMARTLab. “In a time when a lot of people are getting discouraged,
I feel excitement for what we’re doing. This is a quest for truth and knowledge, and
we’re spreading that around. This is something that all of us are passionate about,
so there’s a lot of commitment to this project.”
“I get excited about the impact that these innovative technologies can have and what it can do to impact businesses and students in the world,” said Rebekah Wadsworth, research assistant.
“I’ve been greatly impacted by the work being performed in this lab,” said Rebecca DeGraffenried, research assistant. “I’ve seen great leadership in this lab. I’ve seen so many students who come in and Dale and Dustin will mentor them. I’m really grateful that I have such a good boss and I go to a great school with such awesome opportunities.”
“What business wouldn’t want to know how their marketing campaigns are going to perform?” asked Josh Jolley, research assistant. “We can do that research, and with Shaduf Institute, we’re sharing more of that academic knowledge with businesses. A lot of that academic knowledge gets put in journals and doesn’t have as significant of an impact as it could. We know how important our work is because with this cutting-edge approach to business, knowledge is going to be the biggest differentiator between success and failure.”
“As far as student impact goes, we’ve had numerous student studies go through here,” said Dale Jolley. “We have a Marketing Research 4600 class where students come up with a company that they want to do a small study on, and they get great experience coming in and learning about biometric testing. That’s the most cutting-edge marketing research they can do. They learn how to use the eye tracking, they learn about all the technologies that we have, but additionally they get in the dirt because of the lab that we have. They wouldn’t have that opportunity, because most universities will only teach you about biometric testing, and it’s about one or two paragraphs within a textbook. The students at UVU can tell you what biometric testing is and how it differentiates them. We’ve seen students who have left this university and have received promotions or gotten into PhD programs because of this experience alone. We have a list of hundreds of students who have come through this lab and have done projects or have been in the marketing research classes who have gotten CITI training, which is training on how to do human testing. When they leave, they can put that on their resume. That differentiates them, especially for those marketing jobs where they can say they’re CITI trained, and they can show an example in their portfolio of the kind of work that they did.”