Using the Web to Streamline Administrative Processes in Graduate Education

1.        Process Improvement in the Graduate School

Dean Marsha Landolt established a Graduate School Task Force in March of 1997 to follow-up on the work of a 1992 team that made a number of important procedural changes in graduate admissions.  In her letter to Graduate School faculty and staff she said, “It has become increasingly clear that a complete review of our current efforts is warranted as a basis for assessing what we are doing now, what improvements can be implemented, what new services might be desirable, and what services, if any, we might want to reduce or discontinue providing.”  In April of 1999, the Dean formed a Process Improvement Team (PIT) to assess and re-engineer Graduate School processes.  Members of the team were drawn from the Graduate School, academic departments at U.W. Seattle, U.W. Bothell and U.W. Tacoma, Computing and Communications, and the Graduate and Professional Student Senate.  The PIT has assessed the Graduate School mission, compared services at peer universities, and has developed an assessment survey targeted to U.W. students, faculty and staff.   Although the PIT has not yet implemented changes, the Task Force has overseen simplification of admissions procedures and the development of an online application for admission that includes online fee payments.  The process improvement effort serves as the underpinning of this request.

2.     Technological Opportunities

Just as many companies are now taking advantage of technological opportunities to re-engineer their business processes and “flatten” their organizational structure with respect to interactions with customers and suppliers, we too have an opportunity to harness technology to vastly improve the quality and efficiency of our services.

The factors that contribute to this opportunity are:

a.        Increased access to the Web and computers.  Nearly all faculty, staff, and students have access to computers and most use them in their daily professional lives.

b.       The Web has provided a way to deploy programs without having to customize the client computers.  This greatly simplifies administration and maintenance of computer applications using the Web.

c.        Databases can be integrated with Web forms and other pages creating a dynamic user experience in which Web sites can remember “personalization” and provide content specific to the user.

d.       Technologies have emerged which permit distributed development and maintenance of programs on the Web. So-called “multi-tiered” application development enables distribution of processing and storage workload amongst a group of participating computers.  Object-oriented development has brought about the emergence of reusable objects.  These reusable objects can be shared with trusted campus developers to reduce the “reinventing” syndrome, encourage common standards, and focus development resources on areas best served.

e.        An emerging Web security structure developed by Computing and Communications allows remote servers to authenticate UW NetID users.  This will enable development of campus applications that share a common login and authentication process.

f.         A number of important standards have emerged (including LDAP, XML, etc.) that facilitate system linkages.

g.       The above technologies enable computer applications, even campus-wide applications, to be developed more rapidly, and to be maintained more easily.

h.       The distributed nature of Graduate School administrative processes could reap tremendous benefits from the application of these new technologies.

3.     A Technical Framework for Interaction

The technological developments listed above have brought about the emergence of “personalized” Web pages and Web “portal” sites.  These pages and sites offer a dynamic interaction with users and let the users customize the sites to suit their needs.  Customization is preserved with the user’s profile information on the server.  Some universities, including our own, are pursuing this approach to provide a Web interface to better serve students, faculty and staff.  A Computing and Communications project called MyUW has been in development here for some time.  It is similar in concept to a Web portal called MyUCLA that has been in production at University of California, Los Angeles for over a year.  MyUW will permit students and faculty to have a home page that is personalized, providing access to registration information, degree progress, important notices, etc.  However, MyUW cannot be expected to provide all the information nor serve all the processes with which students, faculty, and staff on our campus may be engaged.  Aware of this, the developers provided MyUW with an extensible application program interface.

We propose to develop a similar system, MyGradProgram, which can be used by graduate students as a supplement to MyUW.  We envision it also being used to facilitate processes involving the Graduate School and its appointed Graduate Program Coordinators (GPCs) and Graduate Program Assistants (GPAs) in academic units.  The MyGradProgram system would provide a Web page for students with important information targeted to them directly as well as a means for them to initiate various processes related to their graduate programs.  GPCs and GPAs would have a similar portal with required actions and reviews listed.  Functional staff groups within the Graduate School and Graduate Admissions would also use a portal to coordinate their aspect of the processes.

This system would be constructed as a general technical framework that supports inclusion of process modules sharing a common user interface and security infrastructure.  It would provide a means of reducing procedural delays and paperwork, while enhancing the Graduate School’s vital role of ensuring quality in graduate education

4.     Components for the Framework: Master’s Degree Processing and Doctoral Supervisory Committee Management

Two major processes would be the first components to be included within the framework:  the processing of master’s degree applications and the management of doctoral supervisory committees.  Both of these highly bureaucratic processes involve the Graduate School, students, and their respective departments.

Currently, students are required to turn in the master’s application (which includes the Graduate School Exit Questionnaire) to the Graduate School by the end of the second week of the quarter.  After the Graduate School does a preliminary review of the application, it is forwarded to the department for approval.  The department subsequently forwards the approved application to the Graduate School for final review resulting in conferral of the degree.  The Graduate School may also consider petitions during the review.  Over 2,000 students complete this process each year, and many of these students appear in person at Gerberding Hall to pick up and submit their master’s applications.  However, in an era in which students are frequently off campus, this is becoming difficult.  Since so many parties are involved in the routing and approval of these transactions it is not always clear to all parties where a given application is in the process.  Graduate School staff do not have time to inform departments and students, so the student is given this responsibility.  The cycle time is adversely affected by the fact that paper must be routed first to the Graduate School, then to the department, then back to the Graduate School, then back to the department (final degree lists).  In addition to student inconvenience, a large investment in staff resources, both central and departmental, is required to manage the process.

The proposed component would allow students to submit their master’s degree applications on the Web, including the Exit Questionnaire.  This will make the process much easier for students, will greatly reduce the data entry effort at the Graduate School, and will improve the cycle time and communications.  Four process milestone dates will be available for students and departments seeking information on the status of master’s applications:

1. Initial application submission

2. Forwarded to department for review

3. Departmental approval

4. Graduate School approval

Students will be automatically notified regarding the status of their applications before the end of the quarter so they will have time to take any necessary actions.  They will see detailed information on any degree contingencies as well.

The second initial component will streamline the management of some 2,500 doctoral supervisory committees by using the Web and email.  The student currently initiates the formation of a supervisory committee by drafting the membership list and forwarding a request to the departmental GPC.  After departmental review, a request memo is sent to the Graduate School.  The Graduate School assigns a Graduate School Representative (GSR) to the committee and sends an approval letter back to the department.  If the committee is reconstituted, this process is repeated.

The proposed process will eliminate this flurry of paperwork by encapsulating the business rules of the Graduate School’s committee approval in a Web page that students will use to directly select committee members and the GSR.  The  GPA or GPC will receive an email requesting evaluation of the proposed committee, and by invoking the associated Web link, they will be able to complete this action and print a copy for their records.  When the approval is granted, emails will be automatically sent to the student, each committee member, and the Graduate School.  In addition to reducing paper work this will improve communications between affected parties and eliminate the Graduate School review as a step which must be completed prior to committee formation.

Additional committee management tasks such as online examination scheduling will not be included in the initial component, however they will be considered for subsequent development and deployment in the following year.

5.     Other processes which may be addressed within the framework

Since many processes follow this model of student/departmental/Graduate School review and approval, many are candidates for component development.  Here are a few examples:

·                     The petition to the Dean is a standard form used to grant exceptions to policy and procedure in various circumstances.  Online submission and review of this form will allow exceptions to be processed more quickly.

·                     Submitting program transfer requests online will facilitate the current review by both academic departments.

·                     Applications for informal concurrent status will also facilitate coordination between participating departments.

·                     Application for on-leave status will provide better communication of on-leave status.  Students on-leave will get automatic emails reminding them when leave status lapses.

·                     Departmental applications for support through the Graduate School Fund.

·                     Departmental interface for the online graduate application system.

·                     Electronic submission and review of theses and dissertations.

6.     Resources

This proposal asks for funding to supplement the existing technical team in the Graduate School with an additional (1.00FTE) senior computer specialist to help develop and maintain these systems.  The Graduate School will fund the difference in salary not met with UIF funds.

The Graduate School’s programming staff has a long record of successful application program development, beginning in the mid-eighties with the U.W. Grant and Contract Proposal and Award System.  In the past three years, the Web-based graduate application for admission and the National Name Exchange program have been developed.  The staff has managed large-scale databases for many years, and developed the Graduate School’s Web server in 1993.  The staff is experienced in a variety of leading-edge Web development technologies including database integration, multi-tiered development, and eCommerce.

The development of the online application for admission was more difficult than the system proposed here because it is used by people world-wide, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  Not only must “7x24” system availability be provided, but a wide range of client computers, browser configurations, and languages must be supported.  This secure program permits applicants to submit their application fee payments online using a credit or debit card.  Currently application volume has increased three-fold from last year (the first year of full operation).  As many as fifty users may be connected at any time.  To explore this program further, the guest login page at https://www.grad.washington.edu/application/guest.html may be used.

The Graduate School also developed and hosts the National Name Exchange interactive Web site, which captures nearly 5,000 student entries per year for the 40 participating institutions.  This site is a mechanism to facilitate the recruitment of underrepresented graduate students from the pool of qualified undergraduates at participating institutions.  U.W. has provided computer support for this consortium as well as a related program, the Western Name Exchange, for the past ten years.  This year participation will be opened up to over 100 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU).

This technical expertise is augmented by in-depth knowledge of graduate education and proficiency in the tools of process improvement and re-engineering.  The two full-time staff programmers have been with the Graduate School for 15 and 25 years respectively.  The director has had formal training in process improvement and has been a participant in various improvement efforts including the U.W. Grant and Contract Process Enhancement Team.

Although the equipment requested in this proposal is similar to the redundant clustered system the Graduate School currently uses for the online application and National Name Exchange, it is needed to expand capacity for this project.  These systems are similar to those specified for USER server systems, running NT and using the IIS Web Server.  The Graduate School will use its existing Microsoft Priority Comprehensive contract to resolve technical issues.  Enterprise systems at U.C.L.A. and other institutions use similar configurations.

Despite the capabilities and accomplishments of the Graduate School’s technical team, the developments outlined in this proposal cannot be developed and sustained with the current technical staffing level.  The partial funding for staff support requested in this proposal will enable the technical team to develop and sustain these efforts.

7.     Project Coordination

We will seek to collaborate and integrate with other campus initiatives seeking to use the Web as an intranet for administrative processing.

A particularly encouraging collaboration will be the use of the UW NetID/Pubcookie authentication component developed by Computing and Communications.  Our server will invoke the component on a C&C server that will return login success information.  This uses the emerging computing paradigm of distributed components in the best sense; the critical security function of authentication will be handled by a central service and the application-specific functionality will be handled by our servers.  We will not need to maintain (and be responsible for) a separate security infrastructure, and our users will not require a separate login.

Our development and deployment environment is, and has been, consistent with the USER project technology infrastructure.  This consistency will make the system more portable and will enhance opportunities for further collaboration.  The Graduate School Computing Services director also participates as chair of the Grant and Contract Process Enhancement Team Technology Subcommittee.  In this role, he has participated with C&C in the evaluation of eCommerce and workflow software for campus use.  The Graduate School is committed to following emerging development standards with respect to workflow and Web development.

8.     Project Timeline

There is a computing joke that “Web years” seem much shorter than calendar years.  It is true that users have come to expect that processes use Web technology, and that this technology is quickly adaptive.  The Graduate School has demonstrated an ability to develop Web-based systems rapidly with the new tools and technologies and this is reflected in the timetable below.  Although Web users have come to expect more from their computer systems, these developments will not be accomplished at the cost of poor requirements analyses, inadequate conceptual design, and insufficient documentation.  Funding for permanent technical staff will ensure that this framework and its components will be developed in a sustainable manner.

© 2001 Graduate School, University of Washington mgpinfo@u.washington.edu