SACRAO Annual Meeting

Working Effectively with Information Technology (IT) Staff at Small Colleges

Monday, February 1 at 8:45AM

Brad Barron, Furman University

Dave Stones, Southwestern University

Working with IT Staff at Small Colleges

• Who are these presenters anyway?

• What do they know?

• What planet are they from?

• Highly selective, very traditional, liberal arts institution located in Greenville SC

• 2,600 full-time undergraduates, 300-500 adult students pursuing undergraduate or graduate education on a part-time basis

• Brad appointed Associate Dean & University Registrar in December 2002 after 5 years as the Registrar at another small liberal arts college

Brad at Furman

• IT staff of just under 30 employees, 6 staff members dedicated to the support of administrative systems

• Datatel “ERP” went live summer 1999 to avoid Y2K meltdown, now v.18

• R25 (Scheduling), Recruitment Plus (Admissions), and Raisers Edge (Development) also installed and supported

Administrative Computing at Furman

Dave Then

• University of Texas at Austin,1965-2000. The final 22 years as Student Information Systems Manager

• Large public university, 50,000 student full-time equivalents

• Supervised 25 systems analysts responsible for Admissions, Registration and other areas.

• All homegrown systems

Dave Now

• Registrar at Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX since summer 2000

• Selective, traditional liberal arts institution with1,250 student full-time equivalents

• 4 staff members in the Registrar’s office, 4 staff members in Administrative Computing

• Datatel Colleague

Big Ideas

• Know your Environment

• Build Relationships

• Understand the Limitations

Who are the Players?

• IT staff on your campus

• You and your staff

• The rest of the folks at your institution (staff, faculty, students, alums, families, “friends”, maybe even board members)

• Factors outside of the institution (vendors, regulators, colleagues and others?)

What can YOU do to make IT work for you?

• Understand the role of IT on your campus

• Be an advocate for IT

• Plan reasonable timelines

• Know what you are requesting

Concrete Suggestions

• Meetings & Teamwork

• Lead the Documentation Effort

• Know the Data

• Share the Responsibility

• Implementation Tips

Meetings and Teamwork

• Meet regularly with lead analyst & decision- makers

• Share production schedules and annual reports

• Attend conference sessions together

• Become part of user-IT teams

Take the Lead on Documentation

• Document all actions in sub-systems: grade collection, sco-pro. Ask the staff involved for their thoughts and ideas.

• Make inefficiencies stand out, stay on the “punch list” until everything is fixed.

• Produce processing schedules, integrate office events with reports, computer tasks.

• Annual Report – accomplishments, immediate needs, long term goals = spirit of the request.

Know the Data

• If you don’t, who will? Become an expert.• Learn tools, such as MS Excel or MS Access or

acquire some, SAS is a favorite.• Arrange routine downloads which you may

repeat.• Massage and review the data. Crosstabs and

frequency diagrams are informative &revealing. What values occur? Were they as expected?

• Follow-up when unexpected values occur, it will save nickel & dime requests to Administrative Computing.

Share the Responsibility

• Multiple parties with responsibility = safety net. Production schedules allow all to monitor progress.

• Analysts should be responsible for spirit of request rather than the letter.

• Analysts should know what must be accomplished and for whom. Let them suggest the best way to achieve.

• Early involvement with request allows design to proceed. Involvement any later may cause friction if planned method is problematic.

Implementation Tips

• Know your practices, procedures and policies. Automate only when these have been stabilized. Change the policies in advance if necessary.

• Manage expectations . Define project scope, and make it clear to all users what it won’t do.

• Understand that you may need to take on some tasks yourself.

Working with IT at Small Colleges

Contact information:

Brad Barron, Associate Dean & University RegistrarFurman Universitybrad.barron@furman.edu

Dave Stones, RegistrarSouthwestern Universitystonesd@southwestern.edu

Working with IT Staff at Small Colleges

Questions?