Minutes - January 31, 2007
Administrative Systems Steering Committee
January 31, 2007
By Polycom
Present: Allen Berger, Tracy Bigney, Kathy Brink, Ralph Caruso, Tracy Elliott, Frank Gerry, Jon Henry, Sue Hunter, Chris Legore, Eddie Meisner, Cindy Mitchell, Mary Stover (for Tom Potter) Joanne Yestramski, Darren-Michael Yocum.
[Recorder’s note: the following is recorded in Agenda Item order, not the order in which discussion actually occurred.]
1. Update on Shared Processing Center performance.
Admissions processing: Jon referred to the reports he had sent this morning. The SPC still needs to hire a sixth temporary staff member. All best guesses for productivity assume six temps. He noted that 225K unique pages have been scanned into system, and that more than 9K items have been shared with more than one application. Four of ten applications received are paper; 60% are online.
There is backlog, especially at the two larger campuses. Jon wondered whether a 48-hour backlog is reasonable, especially on the day after a holiday (double mail delivery) and at times of high volume. He and Ralph will consider this and prepare information for the Steering Committee. Any communication about backlog should be campus-specific, and detailed reporting to each campus is planned.
Allen noted that application deadlines at the universities were set at a time when all documents were processed on campus. He suggested that admissions directors should discuss with Jon the deadlines, their purposes, how sacrosanct they are, whether there is flexibility around these dates in the future, how they dovetail with holidays, and what could make things easier for the SPC.
Ralph agreed that we need to start early to decide “how to paint the future differently than the past,” in order to best serve our students and remain competitive with other institutions. We need to consider what adjustments are needed to the processes used—from the campuses to the SPC, and in the design of the imaging system. He and Jon noted that Jon’s report includes “Planning a Review Summit” in April or early May with the admissions directors’ group.
Jon will attend an ImageNow users conference in April and will learn more about how other institutions handle some of our issues. That information will help to inform the Review Summit.
Cindy and Jon suggested that admissions directors should communicate with guidance counselors, the Community Colleges, Upward Bound, and TRIO programs about the e-app and how important it is, and about deadlines as well.
Jon called attention to a misstatement in his Status Report (the spreadsheet): UMaine did not suspend processing, but asked for hold-off until the December 15 deadline group was handled at the campus.
Loan processing: The Loan Processing staff is complete, fully trained, and managing collections for five campuses. (One of these staff members is presently borrowed to help with application scanning and linking.) Three complete scanning stations are in operation, and the SPC looks forward to regaining space lost to scanning stations as paper files are scanned and fireproof file cabinets go away.
Perkins promissory notes work and Stafford loan exit interviews are both going very smoothly, as is the scanning process for Loan Processing. Jon credited Jolynn Campbell as an excellent manager.
2. Update on recent Admissions Office consultations.
In Sue’s words: “Wendy has been a godsend.” She met with Jon and Kim to review processing steps, and has been helpful at UMaine in the letter generation process. The biggest issues: Date order processing is still a problem. Guidance counselors are confused—this probably relates to backlog. Test scores are not being loaded in a timely fashion. There have also been a few instances where applicants were deleted from the UMaine database after the admit letter was printed somewhere. (Cindy: Probably a duplicate record issue so cleansing software would help [see 5f below].)
Ralph will provide information tomorrow about Wendy’s availability to other campuses.
3. Communication with presidents and public.
Cindy and Ralph will draft a report for review by the Sponsors and Steering Committee later this week before sending on to presidents next week. Ralph will also provide an update at the next presidents’ council meeting in Augusta on February 8.
4. Financial Aid IDP Progress Report.
Darren-Michael reported that in general, IDPs in January have been sparse. In mid-December changes were made to Financial Aid; a new consultant begins next week. Meanwhile, Darren-Michael is working with the group each week. He is encouraging Student Financials and Financial Aid to talk and work together. He is confident that there is ample time to meet Financial Aid deadlines for 2008 implementation.
5. Updates on technical initiatives.
a. Student IDPs (Darren-Michael): Student Records, Student Financials, and Academic Advisement haven’t met much (holidays, semester start). Darren-Michael’s concerns: the planned week-on/week-off schedule (designed to allow people to spend more time on the project without travel) is not working as planned. He stressed the urgent need for campus administrators to allow IDP members to put project work first at least two days a week while they are at their home campuses. It is essential that they dedicate to the implementation, with support from the Sponsors. IDP tasks that are important, but not now perceived as urgent, WILL be urgent soon, and time to complete them will not be available.
Allen asked Darren-Michael to send this message to him so that he can relay it to the other campus representatives (many were unable to attend today’s meeting).
Mary noted that although backfill money was provided to the campuses to help relieve the pressure on IDP members, it doesn’t go too far and on only two campuses was it provided for Student Records.
Darren-Michael reported a March 15 deadline for training and testing plans for all modules that will go live this year. Another deadline—for processing of transfer credit—could possibly involve the Shared Processing Center and begs the question: will this be done on the campus or at the SPC? Similarly, where will application fees and enrollment deposits be processed? Darren-Michael noted that the cashiering process will need to be in place to accept early enrollment deposits, and the GL interface must be running. An early September 2007 goal is set for this interface.
Jon said that there would be serious implications for staffing and system design if transfer credit processing is assigned to the SPC. Ralph stressed that until original plans for the SPC are “humming,” the SPC should be given no additional tasks.
Student Records is building an automated system for transfer credit processing that will allow any student from any university anywhere to see what credits will transfer in to a University of Maine System institution.
b. HR Upgrade (Cindy): As of today, all modifications are frozen unless critical. We need a steady database for training and UAT. Processes that have not been tested are still being found.
c. Sunguard (Ralph): Advance project is going well and is on schedule, with implementation narrowed to just UMaine at this time. An update report will be shared soon. In late spring the interface issues will be addressed; this will not require campus input. In response to a question, Cindy noted that accepting scholarship donations will be considered a business process, not an interface issue.
d. Resource 25 (Cindy): Fort Kent and Presque Isle should be up and running sometime in March. Kim Yerxa is working on an implementation plan. A minor upgrade will be required for the web viewer.
e. TouchNet (Cindy): We have a production system, and are ironing out some data and working on establishment of relationships with banks. (This electronic payment solution will allow compliance with credit card regulations.) The schedule for this implementation will be sent to Steering Committee members.
f. Address cleansing (Ralph and Cindy): An address cleansing software behind all applications would help to eliminate a lot of the duplication issues we are experiencing in PeopleSoft. If we could run SAT scores through this, for example, we could cut back on a lot of duplications.
g. Identity management (Ralph and Cindy): Oracle is increasing our license fee in response to our latest census point data. As a result, we are asking for some additional functionality, including the User Productivity Kit and some more robust identity management capability (using software we already own). Identity management will allow us to manage directories, authenticate users, and show who has access to what and in what way (things we cannot do presently).
h. Warehousing (Cindy). A day of education about warehousing is planned for March 30. Invitees include all sponsors, steering committee members, business area “owners,” and data stewards. Questions to be addressed include “What is a warehouse?” “What is the effort involved?” “What are the options in technology for data warehousing?” “What is the cost?” Cindy will provide a list of invitees. Joanne noted that the timing of this is good; it falls after the HEUG conference, so some attendees will have been introduced to best practices in warehousing.
6. Business case proposal for sponsored programs/imaging.
Ralph reported that progress is being made, and imaging in sponsored programs has a March timeline. Sponsored programs offices at UMaine and USM want to be able to image all of their hard copy grants and contracts files.
7. Communications strategies.
Allen expressed concern about how to ensure that Steering Committee information is shared with all faculty reps to the Board. He will try to meet with faculty reps when the Board convenes at UMF in March. There has been no response as yet to Tracy’s inquiry to faculty about interest in having a faculty rep on the Steering Committee. Eddie reported that a “News from MaineStreet” should go to press this week. She also noted that response to the “Peeks” for the HR upgrade has been very good: nearly 700 hits on the web page in the first four hours, plus several positive email messages.
Kathy is working with Jon to develop a communication strategy for the Shared Processing Center (messages, audiences, timing). It is important to be proactive in informing the general public, as well as the Community Colleges and TRIO programs, about what is going on—perhaps even on a monthly basis. The role of the admissions directors in this communication process should also be considered (and will be at the Summit this spring), e.g. Jon communicates with public and admissions directors communicate with their own students.
Chris encouraged including off-campus centers in the planned communication effort, and suggested a brochure that could be shared with all employees.
Ralph will follow up on encouraging admissions directors to meet regularly and to invite Jon. He will also participate in the communications planning, noting that we do not want to negatively impact the workload on the campuses.
Other.
Joanne wondered if there is a way to remove much of the manual labor required to enter transcripts from multiple grading periods for each applicant, and create a more seamless K-16 process. Cindy emphasized that we really need to get the message out that we need the transcripts electronically. She said a specification for this is included in the Department of Education’s RFP for a new software system, and suggested that we partner with DOE to move this forward, as there are efficiencies and savings that would accrue to both DOE and UMS.
Allen will send out possible dates for future meetings.
The meeting was adjourned.
Respectfully submitted,
Eddie Meisner, Recorder