1. 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

2. Working with IT Staff at Small Colleges Who are these presenters anyway? What do they know? What planet are they from?

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. Big Ideas Know your Environment Build Relationships Understand the Limitations

8. 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?)

9. 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

10. Concrete Suggestions Meetings & Teamwork Lead the Documentation Effort Know the Data Share the Responsibility Implementation Tips

11. 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

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. 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.

16. Working with IT at Small Colleges Contact information: Brad Barron, Associate Dean & University Registrar Furman University brad.barron@furman.edu Dave Stones, Registrar Southwestern University stonesd@southwestern.edu

17. Working with IT Staff at Small Colleges Questions?