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Introduction

    As an introduction to the Action Plan that follows I take a few paragraphs to provide some information about my background and experiences and how I began to consider doctoral studies. Rather than simple listing my educational and professional background, I felt it would be more enlightening (and entertaining) to provide this information in this manner to provide a more historical flow.

How did I get here? ( My educational and professional journey thus far)

    One of the most interesting things about people are the choices that they make and how those choices affect what they ultimately become or desire to become. In 1975, after graduating from high school, studying in a doctoral program was the last thing on my mind. Quite honestly at that time I really had no intention of really even attending college. In the Pittsburgh area, the steel mills were still the linchpin of the local economy and with most of my friends going to the mills, it seemed that college would be nothing more than a four-year delay in my getting into the local mill work force. With some gentle persuasion from family I enrolled at the Community College of Allegheny College (CCAC). While I was initially skeptical about college, what I received from CCAC was an Associate of Arts degree in Liberal Arts and a desire to transfer to a four-year college to continue my education. I transferred to the Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) as an education major, with a specialty in Business Education, specifically Marketing and Business Machines. After graduating with a Bachelor of Science, I taught for a short time as a substitute teacher in the Penn Hills School District and was offered a long-term substitute position at Penn Hills High School. I had hoped that this would become a permanent position (the previous teacher had originally indicated that she would not be returning from a maternity leave), however, this experience ended with the return of the regular teacher from leave.

    In the early 1980’s, the market in the Pittsburgh area for my specialty was nonexistent so I started looking for positions outside of education. I didn't see myself as an office worker and I wanted a job that would give me a chance to put into practice what I learned about management and business. I obtained a position with Ashland Petroleum in their SuperAmerica Marketing Division as a manager of a store. I gained a great deal of practical experience in management, budgeting and people skills, but after three years I decided that this was not what I wanted to do as a career. All throughout high school and college and while I worked for Ashland, I played in a succession of bands. In college, I was performing in area nightclubs several times a week. When I left Ashland, I was in a band that was working regularly in and around the Pittsburgh area so I decided to keep playing while I sorted out what I really wanted to do.

    One of my roommates at IUP who was working at a college in New York suggested that I might be interested in the Student Personnel Services in Higher Education program at IUP. After visiting and speaking with the professors I enrolled in the program. What appealed to me was the unusual combination of skills required to be successful in student affairs. Due to my business background, I was steered toward the area of financial aid and I was able to obtain an assistantship. I completed the program (receiving a Master of Arts) and worked at IUP for several months prior to obtaining a position at Carnegie Mellon. I worked directly in financial aid at Carnegie Mellon for 9 years, moving from a counselor position to ultimately becoming the Associate Director. During this time I was responsible for management of staff within the office, as well as being heavily involved in the computerization of the office and in office process improvement projects.

    After a major reorganization in the Enrollment Division at Carnegie Mellon, I was offered my current position of Associate Director of Enrollment Systems. My current responsibilities are directly related to process reengineering and improvement by utilization of computer automation to provide more accurate and timely delivery of services to students. I was deeply involved with the creation and implementation of Carnegie Mellon’s current Financial Aid System, which automates virtually all steps involved in providing students with aid awards (Need Analysis, Packaging) and ultimately getting the funds disbursed to student accounts. I have developed several important programs currently running on the Carnegie Mellon Student Information System (SIS). These programs include the Early Financial Aid Estimate Program (for high school seniors), the Stafford and Plus Loan certification programs, the current World Wide Web Undergraduate Admission's Application (which feeds directly into the campus database on submission), a web based Admissions Inquiry Application process and currently the development of a new university Commencement System. I also have an extensive background in creating automated programs in Microsoft Excel. In addition, I have taken courses and have extensive experience in several different databases (Panorama, Filemaker, Ingres and Oracle), C++ programming, shell scripting for Unix and have provided over the years quite a bit of computer support for both Windows as well as Macintosh systems and applications. All of which leads up to the creation of a fairly technologically rounded individual, who took advantage of the opportunities that were available. I’d like to note that none of these areas where presented as ‘tool’s of the trade’ in my educational background nor do I have a systems background.

What is My Current Area of Interest?

    After being involved in the implementation of three systems at Carnegie Mellon and seeing the impact of these changes, I began to think about the impact on staff. I still use my counseling training quite a bit these days, the problem is it’s not with students, it’s with staff. I am interested in the application of technology to student services and the problems and effects that application creates. As I have developed programs that automate processes, I often wonder about the long-term cost for the short-term gain. It appears to me that a number of initiatives by colleges using the internet for education are not taking into consideration the human interaction that in part makes the college experience so unique. Many appear to simply be made so that a school has a presence or appears to be doing ‘internet friendly’. I am obviously concerned with improving processes, but at the same time, underlying support systems should not be endangered. What are the techniques that allow a successful implementation for students as well as the college? What happens to the human interaction process?

    When experienced staff leave the institution what are the background qualifications for new hires? As the field changes what changes are needed in the basic skills of staff? What are the implications of these technologies as we move towards the ‘Global Village’? With the increasing use of the technology to provide instruction and ancillary services, many student development issues student affairs professionals have thought were important elements of the post secondary experience may be lost or at best are not being addressed.

What are my Desired Outcomes from the Core Experience? How can these assist in my continuing studies?

    I hope to continue to improve how I identify issues and focus my thoughts. Core has already begun to assist me in this process. I really think that interactions with others can sharpen your current view of the world and provide data to continually check the validity of what you believe. Rather than focusing on why I think something is true, I hope that it helps me to be better able to grasp other possibilities and my ability to analyze accept or reject them. I also find it comforting that others are dealing with the same kind of issues and I have an opportunity to share ideas and concerns. Being a believer in self actualization, I find that the group process to learning places much more responsibility on me. I hope to be much better at being able to ask questions. I hope to be less afraid of not knowing the ‘right’ answer and more confidant of utilizing and expanding my own skill at identifying, analyzing and selecting the possibilities. I’m looking forward to continuing my ‘Journey’!

My Action Plan

    Specifically this plan will serve as the ‘road map’ that I will use for charting my experience and detailing my expected outcomes (outlined above), and the activities I will use to achieve those outcomes. As a ‘road map’ it will continue to be developed over time as I ‘travel’ and identify other ‘stops’ that I feel are important to my experience both individually and with my study group. The essential elements, as expressed in the course syllabus are related to:

1. Development of skills central to critical thinking. These include reading, writing and thinking of issues from multiple perspectives.
2. Becoming more actively ‘involved’ in issues of importance to my specific area of interest and to the field of education. This obviously includes discovering, developing and refining the methods used to identify issues as a critical element of involvement. A different or meaningful understanding of an issue will allow for a meaningful contribution.
3. Becoming adept in the use of current, and the identification of new, uses of computer technology as important tools for communications and research as a citizen-practitioner and scholar.

Individual Projects

1. Technology Implementation and the Resulting Impact on Student Services in Higher Education. – I have found some interesting professional papers on Technology and the future of Higher Education from Cause (The Association for the Management of Information Technology in Higher Education) located at (http://www.educause.edu):

 

 

Katz, Richard N. & West, Richard P. (1992). Sustaining excellence in the 21^st century: a vision and strategies
    for college and university administration (Professional Paper Series, #8). Boulder, CO: The Association for
    the Management of Information Technology in Higher Education.

Ernst, David J., Katz, Richard N. and Sack, John R. (1994). Organizational and technological strategies for
    higher education in the information age (Professional Paper Series, #13). Boulder, CO: The Association for
    the Management of Information Technology in Higher Education.

Baltzer, Jan A. (1991). People and process: managing the human side of information technology application
    (Professional Paper Series, #7). Boulder CO: The Association for the Management of Information Technology in
    Higher Education.

These apply to strategies both organizational and technological, how to sustain excellence in administration and managing people involved in the application of technology. As I mentioned above the issues related to people is really my area of interest. I’d like to use these articles to begin to identify important issues related to technology implementation and how it is changing the Higher Education workforce, and to outline some basic areas that I feel should/need to be examined. I am interested in determining what, if anything is being done to prepare future practitioners in student affairs about technology and it’s implications for changing the field. Using the information from these papers, I’d like to do a brief overview of the curriculum of some current student affairs programs. A fairly current listing of programs can be identified via the NASPA Web site (http://www.naspa.org).
 

2. Professional Journal – I plan to use this ‘historical record’ to evidence or chart my thoughts and reflections of the processes and discussions that arise from Core discussions (both as a whole and within my study group) as well as the readings assigned in the syllabus. My hope is that this will show over time, growth in both how I view issues and how I use the input from others in my study group and professionals in my field to shape my views.

 
3. Selected Additional Readings on Teamwork – In attempting to understand other perspectives of thought and how they impact group processes, I feel it is important to look at alternative areas where information addressing barriers in groups may be found. To that end, I have begun reading articles related to group management for organizations experiencing change or focusing on change. As I read these articles or books, I plan to write ‘think pieces’ on the issues being addressed as they relate to my personal area of interest. I currently have identified two introductory books that are related to creating effective teams (more to follow):

 

 

Pritchett, Price and Pound, Ron (1992). Team Reconstruction, Building a High Performance
    Work Group During Change. Dallas, TX: Pritchett Publishing Company.

Sashkin, Marshall & Sashkin, Molly G. (1944). The New Teamwork: Developing and Using
    Cross-function Teams. New York, NY: American Management Association.

I am planning to use the information from these two books to help me focus on the process of building
effective teams and strategies that have productive results. There is an added benefit in that both of
these address issues related to process reengineering and some issues that arise from those process
evaluations and changes.
 

4. Core Folder on the World Wide Web – I've been keeping track of what I've been using to obtain the information I currently have received (downloaded files, e-mail, searches via the web, etc.). What I am also doing is taking all of this information, as well as my writings, projects, etc. and creating a web page which I'm thinking I can publish.                 My intention here is to use this as an electronic vehicle for presentation of my folder (of course I'd also make paper versions available.

1. Article on Technology Implementation for Small Colleges – I am currently renewing my membership in PASFAA (the Pennsylvania Association of Financial Aid Administrators). I have presented at four conferences in the past on issues related to ‘automation’ and was a member of the Technology Sub-Committee. I would like to re-involve myself in this committee and write an article for the association newsletter on issues related to the steps a small college should take as it decides to ‘automate’ it’s aid process and services.

Currently, my group The Collaborators (formerly Table 2) are still in the process of making a decision about what our project will be. We are considering several options related to issues being raised in the Core experience.

Next Steps in the Process (now that I know what I think I know)

I am currently leaving this section open to allow me to add information on lessons learned and to remind me that the journey continues.