The Steering Committee, established to identify ways to improve the opening of each semester, made its recommendations to the President’s Cabinet for approval and implementation.
According to Eugene Dial, vice president for student affairs, the implementation of the recommendations of the subcommittees with align Nicholls with other universities and the best professional practices, and some issues are already being tackled.
“The steering committee with meet to review progress on the various initiatives,” Dial said. “Each vice president is responsible for seeing that the recommendations are implemented in a timely manner. The steering committee will serve as a communications hub.”
Dial also said other services will be reviewed, but now the main focus areas are those which pertain to students and the beginning of the semester.
The biggest issues that the committee and subcommittees addressed were reducing lines, reducing the number of forms students fill out, providing students quick access to their credit balance and providing a way for students to take care of business online rather than standing in lines.
In a report submitted by the Steering Committee, areas of financial aid, fee payment, admissions, records, registration and class scheduling were looked at.
“Some of the initiatives have already been implemented,” Dial said. As an example, Dial cited class registration. Class registration has been left open for an extended time to allow students some extra time. This extra time gives students the opportunity to make changes to their schedules from the first day of class scheduling thought the last day of late registration.
“Errors can also be corrected without having to wait weeks or months,” he said.
Other changes include on-line acceptance of financial aid awards, which would result in fewer lines. Also, on-line payment of fees is another option that is expected to be implemented for the spring semester.
Another option students will have for the spring semester will be to activate their schedules over the phone by calling the controller’s office. Also, students will be able to apply any credit balance to their Colonel Card accounts.
Within admissions, a recommendation to be implemented is to have transcripts from other colleges evaluated as received by the University. This will also include walk-in requests and one-day requests.
Within records, registration and class scheduling issues, the committee is working toward allowing students to be able to request a transcript using their ID number and pin number as verification.
According to Dial, these changes did not come with any resistance toward the concept of improving services. “People were skeptical towards change until the picture became clearer.”
Dial also said recommendations regarding operational procedures are currently being implemented. “Dr. Hulbert wanted to see immediate improvement,” he said.
These improvements come as cost effective ways for the University to improve services. “The biggest improvement is working smarter, from a customer oriented perspective.”
Throughout the process students were involved. According to Dial, University President Stephen Hulbert believes in shared governance. “That is giving individuals who have a stake in the issue to participate in finding solutions,” he said. “I am confident that this type of shared decision making will continue.