Cost Savings with Technology

1
Cost Savings with Technology

• Recent Progress in the College of Arts and
  Sciences

2
Areas we have targeted

• Academic audit process
• Assignment of advisors
• Semi-annual pre-registration process
• Storage and maintenance of student records

3
Academic Audit Process

• conducted at the end of every semester,
• tracks academic progress of all 9,800
  undergrads in Arts and Sciences
• 700-900 students notified of serious academic
  problems each semester
• formerly done almost entirely by hand and paper
• required 800 hours (deans staff) per semester

4
Academic Audit Process

• new electronic system generates audit letters
  from a MS Access database
• reduces time to 280 hours/ semester
• postage savings alone of 2,000 per year
• total cash savings of 6,000 per year
• total cash/salary savings of 24,000 per year

5
Assignment of Advisors

• Done every summer
• assigns 2,800 students to 200 advisors
• required 1000 hours (deans and staff) annually
• typical cost 15,000 (materials and postage)
• students now provide information online
• total cash savings of 10,000 per year
• total time now less than 50 hours annually
• total cash and salary savings of 23,000 per year

6
Semi-Annual Pre-registration

• formerly cost 7,500 (materials postage)
• formerly required 280 hours of staff time per
  year to prepare materials
• new web-based system eliminates all costs for
  materials and postage
• reduced staff time to

7
Student Records (storage and maintenance)

• old system - more than 9,800 paper files
• reference to a students record involved pulling
  file, taking to dean, then re-filing
• more than 200 such files pulled per day
• files could not easily be viewed by more than one
  person at a time
• files were often misplaced or misfiled

8
Student Records

• new electronic, imaged database never loses files
• files viewed simultaneously by multiple users
• new system is highly secure
• new system saves more than 150 hours annually
• saves thousands/yr for current record maintenance
• saves 2,000 annually for microfiching of
  graduating students records

9
Total Savings(four new processes)

• More than 2,900 hours of staff and deans time
• Cash savings of 32,000
• Cash salary savings of 75,000

10
Our Team

• Paul Madden, programmer
• Lynn Walker, database administrator
• Rachel Most, assistant dean
• Bob Campbell, computer/technology support