The Student Services reengineering team has done an enormous amount of listening to the community in the last month. Overall, they have talked face-to-face with more than 1,000 students, faculty, and staff members, and have held working meetings with more than 200 of these people.
The interactions have been in the form of interviews (30+), focus groups (5), open/departmental meetings (55), and work sessions to create diagrams showing current procedures (20).
The team also has analyzed the following: 16 prior surveys that relate to student services; practices at more than 20 other institutions; and diagrams with time, cost, and volume of transactions in student services. In addition, the team has studied relevant new technologies both inside and outside MIT.
This month, the team will work to create a rough draft of the processes, technology, and organization that would be needed to support a new way to provide student services. They also will assess opportunities for future redesigns.
In January, the team is scheduled to discuss and refine their implementation plans and timing and to plan the next redesign(s) based on community feedback. Planning the various stages of implementation will be done in February.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on December 13, 1995.
