Institutional Renewal
Although the mission of the College remains constant over time, the means and methods it uses to accomplish its mission change. A vital institution learns and adapts as it grows to ensure that it remains effective. Ten years ago, for instance, web registration wasn't necessary. It was enough then to queue students in lines just before the start of the semester to register for courses. Today's students not only want to register online, but they expect to pay their bills online as well. Further, business practices that worked well when the student body numbered 8,000 may not work well at 14,000.
The key question of institutional renewal is: how would you design the College or, say, your department, if you had the opportunity to start from scratch, knowing what you know now and fully using the technology available today?
The Center's mission includes nurturing institutional renewal activities on campus by:
- assisting the college in identifying key areas to target for business process analysis and redesign.
- working with leaders from those areas to develop strategies for renewal.
- coordinating the work of planning and implementation teams.
- allocating resources to support institutional renewal efforts, when appropriate.
- providing regular reports.
The Student Services Improvement Project, which began in 2004, is an example of an institutional renewal project. In spring 2004, a cross functional team worked with a consultant to map all processes used to admit students to the College, and then to redesign them to remove unnecessary obstacles to admitting prospective students. During the next year and half, teams of staff worked to implement the redesign by revising outmoded policies and procedures, by reprogramming Datatel's Colleague, and by working with OIT to implement an online admissions portal which will go live in April 2006. The Project concludes in late spring with the implementation of a document management system.
This project has been a cooperative venture between Student Services, the Office of Information Technology, and the Center for Institutional Effectiveness and Research.
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