AASU GTREP Success Team
When Pam Magliulo assumed responsibility for assisting students participating in the joint Armstrong Atlantic – Georgia Tech Engineering program (GTREP) she was told that “it wouldn’t take too much time since there were not many students”. Students in this program were finishing their core classes and taking upper-level engineering classes through GT-Savannah.
As Pam learned the complicated process these students faced, she began coordinating with other staff and faculty to streamline the process. Students in this program would take both GT and AASU classes in the same semester, sometimes on the same campus. But they were required to apply each semester to the other university as transient students, then cross-enrolled at both universities. The paperwork and coordination required for this kind of unique program resulted in miscommunication, frustration on the part of the students, extra work for the staff, and extra time spent by all involved.
Pam had worked on the frontline of the Registrar’s office and knew that students are here to get an education. They should not have tounderstand our behind the scene requirements. She lead the team to institute the following changes:
Communication
The key to a smoother process for the students was good communication. On-campus, meetings with Pam, Dr. Thomas Murphy (advisor), Justin Barlow (admissions) and Larry Wester (Registrar) were held to review current processes and ensure that everyone was up-to-date on the new procedures. These meeting provided an opportunity to monitor the process and quickly make changes as needed.
Increased communication between GT-Savannah, GT Atlanta, and AASU coordinatorsallowed those involved in day-to-day operations to agree upon consistent procedures and anticipate problems and address them before students were impacted. Improved communication between AASU and GT staff members resulted in more problems being solved on-the-spot. It is now common practice for one coordinator to call the other for clarification or information - while they are talking to a student. The immediate result is better service to the student with the coordinators taking the role of student advocates. This helps to decrease the “translation problems” (he said, she said) that use to occur when students were sent to several people to get the answer to their question. (faster, friendlier, easier)
Admissions
Student are no longer required to submit an admissions application each semester. AASU now uses the transient letter from GT to set the student up for registration.This decreased the turnaround time, benefiting both the students and the admissions staff. (easier,faster)
Registration
Registration for GTREP students had been a minefield. There was the challenge of signing up for courses on two campuses and problems with getting course overload permission. Improved communication between key staff members of both universities and anticipation of potential problems reduced mistakes, frustration and wasted time. (faster, friendlier, easier)
Results
We believe that the increase in the number of students participating in the GTREP program is related to the improvement in service resulting from a streamlined process and improved communication between the two institutions. And these are the result of the team effort in addressing the problem. (See chart below)
In 2006, when Pam first began coordinating this program for AASU, an average of ten students per semester participated in this program. Since the team coordination approach has been implemented there has been a dramatic increase in the number of students choosing to be a part of the AASU-GTREP program. As a result of the success of this program and excellent relationships that now exists between the staffs at AASU, GT-Savannah, and GT – Atlanta, we are starting a new program for freshman engineering students this fall. In addition to over 30 GTREP students pre-registered for fall, we have 33 freshmen in a new PILOT engineering program between AASU and GT.