Guide to not getting lost in the remote work/office work mix
ENG 220- proposal
1. i
Making the Academic Advising Office a Better
Environment
Prepared for
Leah Richards
Director of Academic Advising
Southern New Hampshire University
Prepared by
Leah Palermo
Student worker in Academic Advising Office
Southern New Hampshire University
April 25 2016
2. ii
MEMORANIUM
TO: Leah Richards, Director of Academic Advising
FROM: Leah Palermo, Student Worker at Academic Advising and Student at Southern New
Hampshire University
DATE: April 19, 2016
SUBJECT: Making the Academic Advising Office run more efficiently
This is my proposal on how to make the Academic Advising Office a better place and the
improvements that we can make as a team.
I want to make the Academic Advising office more efficient, ecofriendly, and easier for students
and faculty to find. There are multiple ideas I have that can help the Academic Advising office to
make everyone work better as a team and make the office more organized.
There are a few solutions and ideas I have thought of to make this possible. I want to do this by
trying to make more documents and paperwork online to reduce paper use. I also want to add
maps and signs around campus so people know where the office is and can find it easier. Since
we are planning on switching locations it won’t be as hard for students to find, but this also
works for other offices around campus. Adding more training programs so student works and
staff can keep on track of the new paperwork and changes around the office to avoid making
little mistakes.
I think making some changes will help the Academic Advising office run smoother and at a more
efficient rate. This will help the faculty in the office along with the students who come into our
office to make their time easier.
I am grateful for your time and consideration of this matter. I believe this will help you, the
Academic Advisors, other workers in the Academic Advising office and the students who visit
our office.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to work on this assignment. It has been a real
education. If you have any Questions about the report, please contact me at
Leah.Palermo@snhu.edu or by phone at (978) 806-1046.
4. iv
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This report will provide detailed solutions and recommendations on how to make the Academic
Advising Office a better place by giving examples on what we are doing right, what we can
change, and how.
Training Programs
When students and faculty start working at the Academic Advising office, along with other
offices at SNHU, they have to go through a training program on how to you Datatel. Datatel is
the system we use to look up students and their academic background. I think if we had more
training programs on things like papers that go through the office, how to deal with unpleasant
students or parents, and random questions that come in on a daily basis that can we difficult to
answer without prior knowledge in the workplace.
Making the Office More Ecofriendly
In the Academic Advising Office, we use a lot of paper for documents that students need to
modify their programs along with other paperwork that students and faculty need. I think that
putting these documents online would make it a faster and easier process while saving money on
paper and ink. This would make the office eco-friendlier and the money we save could be put to
better use.
Since we are moving the office to a smaller space this would reduce the amount of traffic that
comes through the office for students who are coming in only for paperwork.
Make the Office a Friendlier Environment, Easier to Find and an overall
better place
Often times it is confusing to find offices on campus and the academic advising office is one of
them. I think adding maps around campus in popular locations like the dining hall and library
will make it easier to find offices and academic advisors.
The Academic Advising office already had a friendly and welcoming environment, but I wanted
to find more ways to make it better. I gave out some surveys to see what students thought of the
office and if they know about all the things we offer here, like PAL’s, walk in Wednesdays, and
asking how to improve the office.
Minor Changes in These Areas Can Save Time and Money
Making some minor changes in all of these topics can save time and money. It will help student
workers and staff in the office work better and more efficiently and also save money on paper
and ink. This will make the office run more efficiently and make for a better environment for
students
5. Making the Academic Advising Office a Better Environment 1
MAKING THE ACADEMIC ADVISING OFFICE A BETTER
ENVIRONMENT
Introduction
At the academic advising office, there are a lot of students who come in for many different
reasons. This could be to meet with their advisor for an appointment or for walk- in hours, to sit
with a PAL, to get papers they need for their programs and many more. The office runs smooth
and efficient right now, but there are always some changes that could be made improve the
office.
Making changes will make it easier for students and faculty on campus to use the Academic
Advising office to their advantage. This will help the advisors, student workers, and other staff in
the office make sure everything is going well.
There are many ways to improve the office. Making sure training programs that are already
required are enough training for the staff to start working is the first step. Along with this there
could be more training programs and other methods added to make sure student workers and
other staff are prepared when starting to work in the office. Making the office eco-friendlier will
help the environment and save money. Doing this would also make it easier for students and staff
to get papers signed and ready to be turned in to the Advisors. To make the office easier to find,
adding maps and signs around campus would point people in the right direction of the Academic
Advising office. This would also benefit other offices that may be difficult to find for someone
who doesn’t know the campus well.
Overall this proposal is to make Academic Advising a better place for everyone who comes
through the office. Based on suggestions from students, student workers, and other people in the
office this could make the office work to its full potential.
In preparation for this report surveys were given to a range of students to see how they feel about
the Academic Advising office and how they think it can be improved. The Academic Advising
office is mostly focused on freshman and first year transfer students, but there are also Walk-in-
Wednesday’s and PALs that are available for upper classman. This is why surveys weren’t
limited to just freshman. The surveys were given to students of all different ages to see if they
know about the things the Academic Advising office can help them with.
For this Proposal there were interviews with Leah Richards (Director of Academic Advising),
Brenda Rossignol (Office Manager), and Nick Holman (Student worker- 4 years) who all work
in the Academic Advising office. These interviews helped to understand what they think of the
office and get information on what has changed in the past and what they would like to see
change in the future. This gave a better idea of what other people think of the office and
improvements that could be made.
6. Making the Academic Advising Office a Better Environment 2
Training Programs
One way to make the Academic Advising office run more smoothly is to make sure the training
programs provided are giving enough knowledge for students and staff to start working on them.
Making sure training programs for student workers are effective and helpful, while also adding
some extra training in areas people tend to struggle with would be helpful. Some of these areas
include knowing about the forms that come through the office and being able to direct them
where they need to go, being able to answer harder questions from students and other advisors,
and overall knowledge about the office and things that go on here.
This is to help student workers be more prepared while helping other students and faculty who
come into the office. To do this one should to make sure the training programs staff go through
before they start working are helping and are giving enough training that they would need to
work in the office. Student workers and staff in the office know what they are doing for the most
part, but can get confused when answering difficult questions from students or figuring out what
forms go where.
This is not implying that the training new staff are put through already isn’t helpful. When staff
start working in the Academic Advising office they are required to go to a training class for the
Datatel system. Datatel is the online database that is used to look up students and their
information. This includes looking up their classes, GPA, academic information, and anything
else someone working in the office would need to know about their academic standing. The
training program is helpful in some areas, but sometimes student workers don’t get to know the
system well until they actually start working on it. Nick said having more training on Datatel
would be helpful. This is because there are so many pages that the staff in the Academic
Advising office doesn’t use and don’t know about. Nick added training on the basics at the
beginning of each semester would be beneficial for student workers. Quizzing staff on how to
use the system would help them learn more about it and know how to use it better.
There are constantly new forms coming into the office and rules change frequently to make it run
better. Training student workers to make sure everyone knows how to help student without
having to ask for help from another worker or staff member in the office would be helpful. This
will make it easier for advisors and other staff and also get things done faster. “Wouldn’t it be far
more effective to train your employees to engage your customers so they drive your sales and
marketing efforts and fuel your growth? Couldn’t doing so free up your employees to think
creatively and innovate in the ways that will ensure your company is constantly improving and
that they’re much happier in their jobs?” (Lee) Although the Academic Advising office isn’t
using sales, it would be more effective for students to be able to answer questions on their own
without having to ask for help.
Brenda usually has meetings once a month to go over new forms that come into the office and to
go over new things that are going on. This is to help with these problems of not knowing about
new forms and other things that are happening on campus that would affect the student workers.
This is helpful, but giving out these papers and making staff study them and possibly be quizzed
on them the next week would force them to learn about the forms and avoid small mistakes.
7. Making the Academic Advising Office a Better Environment 3
In the interviews with Leah, Brenda, and Nick they were asked if they think student workers
have enough training on Datatel, office forms, and how to deal with unpleasant students and
parents. They all agreed that it would be beneficial to have more guidance on these subjects.
Brenda said a lot of training is done on the job by doing it and learning as you go. Working on a
day to day basis is how we tend to learn and understand the office. Leah said the training that is
given is helpful but more administrative. She thinks student workers need more training on being
a customer service rep and how to deal with demanding students and parents. Nick said student
workers should be allowed access to see if a student has a FERPA, which is the form that allows
anyone at the university to talk to a student’s parent. Since parents often call to check on their
children’s education it would be faster if a student worker had access to check if they are allowed
to give the parent any information.
Leah, Brenda, and Nick agreed that adding monthly training for student workers to get them up
to date on forms and what is going on around the office would be helpful. Leah also said sharing
more and talking with other student workers about how they handled certain situations would
help if the problem ever happened again in the future. She said sharing wisdom with newer
students and hearing different perspectives on what happens in the office would improve their
skills. In a journal about Training student workers in a social learning space it touched upon
something like this. It said “providing a place where learners can seek help to improve their
language skills, all three student workers agreed that assisting students in this way was the most
important part of their duties.” (Naomi) This made a connection because although it’s not a
language barrier that student workers have, but a lot the time students can work better and
explain something easier than a supervisor could. This could make it easier for students to learn.
Making the Office More Eco-friendly
Making the office eco-friendlier can be easy and beneficial. One example is to make papers
available online and not just in the office. This will reduce the amount of money spent on ink and
paper, along with saving trees and helping the environment.
The Academic Advising office has already started trying to make eco-friendly decisions by using
less papers and recycling all the papers that is being used. Although this is not suggesting to go
completely paperless, this is a topic that has been around for a long time. “Most agree that the
term paperless office first grabbed the public's imagination as a result of "The Office of the
Future," an article that appeared in Business Week in 1975” (Shiffer) Reducing the amount of
paper is a better and more practical idea.
A few years ago the Academic Advisors use to use files for every single student to hold their
paperwork and forms. That was before we began scanning and using image now. Now they don’t
keep those papers in the office, but they are on file in the computer.
There are a lot of papers that come around for students. These are mostly program modification
papers that let students add, drop, or change their programs. This includes majors, minors,
clusters, advisors, etc. They also have other papers and forms that students can take to see what
8. Making the Academic Advising Office a Better Environment 4
clusters are available, petitions to amend degrees, final exam schedules, overload forms, petitions
to take an online class, and many more. Hundreds of these forms end up being printed a week.
That ends up being a lot of money that is being spent on paper and ink that could be saved and
put towards other things in the office.
If the office switches to an online system to get documents signed and handed in it would reduce
paper use significantly. Some of these papers are already offered online, but instead of searching
for them students would rather come in and get them. If it was easier to find all documents on a
student’s MySNHU account homepage, they could fill them out online and email them to
whomever would need to sign it. Then they would meet with an advisor to finish the process and
get it handed in. “Advances in mobile, online and cloud technology are rapidly accelerating the
deal-making process, cutting paperwork, travel expenses and time, executives say.”
(Technology)
Nick disagreed with the idea to make documents available only online, saying he thinks more of
the time students prefer to fill out paperwork and have it in front of them. If this is the case a
student could have the option of printing the document on their own and then bringing it in the
office. It would be the same as the system the office is using now.
Although making forms and documents available online will help in more ways than one. It is
easier to keep track of documents on the computer than in a hard copy. Processing papers is time
consuming and sometimes papers can be misplaced or lost. Having them stored online and saved
on a hard drive makes them easier to file and find when needed.
This could make the process easier so students wouldn’t have to go around campus trying to find
their professors and advisors to get their papers signed. They would just email it to them and then
bring it to the Academic Advising office to complete the process. This would also be better for
faculty who can’t make it on campus to sign these papers in person.
Unfortunately, the faculty don’t have the system on their computers that would allow them to
make these changes online yet. They have started searching for a system that would allow them
to make these changes. Once the faculty finds a system they like, that would allow these changes
they are thinking about switching over and possibly making more forms available online.
Figure 1
Benefits to making more forms
available online.
9. Making the Academic Advising Office a Better Environment 5
Another way the Academic Advising office can help the environment is to stop printing
unnecessary things. Sometimes Advisors print things they don’t need and it is wasting paper and
ink. The office is already planning to make the office eco-friendlier by reducing the number of
printers from 3 machines to just 1. They are also getting rid of the T.V. in the office because
students would rather look at their phones than watch the T.V. so it is wasting energy. Reducing
the amount of machines running in the office will help save energy. Nick also suggested
switching to eco-friendly lights in the office. There are all great ways to help the environment.
Make the Office a Friendlier Environment, Easier to Find, and an overall
better place
Everyone who comes into the Advising suite would agree that the office has a friendly
environment. The lobby is decorated with chalk boards that have designs and messages on them
along with accessories on the walls. The bright colors and decorations make the office
environment more upbeat and happy.
Coming into college is hard for freshman and some students don’t use their academic advisors to
their full advantage. Making sure advisors are friendly and easily accessible for help is
important. Luckily in the survey handed out all but 1 said their advisor is easily reachable, and
the one who said she sometimes was. It is also important for advisors to help students figure out
what they want to do, because a lot of the time freshman don’t know or are wrong about their
choice. “Good advsors discuss multiple careers and encourage students to develop skills suited
for diverse paths.” (Noor)
Although this campus is small it can be difficult for new students or people unfamiliar with the
campus to find their way around. Adding maps around campus in the more popular areas will
make it easier to find the Academic Advising office along with other offices on campus. Making
students more aware of things going on in the office that they can take advantage of.
Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) is in the middle of building a new welcome
center. The Academic Advising office is switching locations and is being moved to this new
building. Leah and Nick think this will make it easier for students to find, since it will be with
other office that are similar. However, Brenda thinks it’s going to need a long adjustment period.
Figure 2
Visual of the lobby in the Academic
Advising Office
10. Making the Academic Advising Office a Better Environment 6
This is because a lot of students associate Academic Advising with Exeter 59, because staff has
been trying to get it into everyone heads for years so they know where it is located. Switching
locations and having it surrounded by other offices might make it confusing.
There has also been talk about changing the name from Academic Advising to Student Success
offices. This is because the Dean of Student Success and the Assistant Dean of General
Education have their offices in this suite. If this were to happen it might cause confusion on
where students have to go to meet with their advisors.
To make it easier for students to make appointments a new system called time trade is being
added. This will allow students to make their appointments online automatically. This will also
send out reminders to students on when their appointments are. This will make it easier for
students to switch around their appointments and make find a time that works for them. Right
now students either need to call or come in to the office to make an appointment with their
advisor. Hopefully students will find it as less of a hassle to make their appointments online and
on their own time. Time trade is used at schools like Harvard and Bentley along with big name
companies like BestBuy, Target, and Lowes to schedule their appointment.
When students come into SNHU they need to take a SNHU 101 course. This course is supposed
to help students get through their first year and give them an idea of what to expect in their
college career. There is an upper classman in each of these classes who is a peer advising leader
(PAL) These PAL’s have office hours in the Academic Advising office to help students with
anything they might be struggling with. If more students used their PAL’s more often when they
have questions or need help on something it would give them a better understanding of things.
PAL’s are recognized in the office because of a chalk board wall that lets students know they are
there, but putting signs around telling students to see a PAL in this office if they have questions
would be helpful.
Figure 3
Screenshot from Time Trade website
to show other companies that uses
time trade
11. Making the Academic Advising Office a Better Environment 7
Improvements the Academic Advising Office Has Made Over the Years
There have already been some major changes to improve the office. They have added staff
members to soften the workload and connected an advisor to the office manager to make sure
everyone remains on the same page with things. This helps advisors know what they can do to
help the front desk, and the student workers and anyone else working in the office to help the
advisors. This makes it easier to communicate with eachother.
Upperclassmen need to come into the office to get forms signed when they are changing their
programs just like freshman do. The way they use to run this was they would have to meet with
the Dean of Student Success, Carey Glines. With her busy schedule this could take weeks to get
an appointment with her. Two years ago walk-in-Wednesdays we added for upperclassmen.
Walk-in- Wednesdays are so upperclassmen can come in all day to meet with one of the advisors
and get their forms signed and processed. This can take a while sometime because the advisors
get backed up so easily since they only have one day dedicated to it. It is much better than what
was being done before thought. Usually the forms are signed that day and students wont have to
wait weeks for an appointment.
Another change that has been made to make this easier on upperclassmen is by accepting forms
without a meeting. When a student is trying to change an advisor or add a cluster they can just
drop the form off and it will bee processed for them. This saves the students and our advisors
time.
Flaws and Things to Work on in the Academic Adiving Office
Overall the Academic Advising Office is efficient and is helpful for students who need guidance.
All offices have things they can do to improve and make them better though. The Academic
Advising office isnt any different. The office itself runs smoothly, but there are some that
Figure 4
Visual of the PAL’s desk, located in the lobby
12. Making the Academic Advising Office a Better Environment 8
everyone can change to make the office better for students and faculty who need our help.
Besides the previous subjects on things to work on there are a few other things to improve.
One of the things was making more time for the upperclassmen who need to use our office. As
previously said, even though upperclassmen don’t have advisors in the office doesn’t mean they
don’t need to use it. They need to come to get papers signed if they are changing their programs
and get forms signed. They now have walk-in-Wednesdays for upperclass but during the busier
times of the year that isnt enough. In the survey given out the last question was asking for ways
to improve the office and almost all the answers had to do with adding more walk in hours. One
student even suggested “Add a Minor Monday.” Adding more walk-in hours for upperclassmen
would be helpful to the office.
Another way to make the office run better is to communicate better with other departments.
Many times students get sent to us from other offices on campus and nobody knows why they
are there. If offices communicate better with eachother it would help for everyone to figure out
where to send students for different things they need. Having meetings with offices like
admissions, international student services, and one stop would help everyone. It would make it
easier on the staff at the academic advising office and all the other office that work together.
Things to Change in the Future
For the future there are already some changes coming up. As said before the office is moving
locations and adding Time Trade. There are some other changes that would benefit the office and
could be easy to do.
During the peak months of the year when students are constantly in and out of the office it would
be helpful to make processing forms easier and faster. This connects with walk-in hours for
students. Adding more walk-in hours and making them easy to find would make help this. If an
advisors walk-in hours were on their MySNHU account page along with their information that
could make more students come in for them. Some students might now be coming in because
they don’t know when their advisors walk-in hours are or they don’t know they have them at all.
Possibly adding a staff member and having someone dedicated to walk-ins every day could be
benefitial.
Another way to slow down traffic going through the Academic Advising office would be to put
the forms that students need on a bulletin board outside of the office and label them with an
explination of that they are. A lot of the time students don’t know what forms they need and
don’t understand what program modification forms or petition to amend degree forms are. If
there was a small explination saying “A prgram mondification form is to change, add, or drop a
major, minor, cluster, or concertration” a student would understand right away.
Students come in to see their advisors a lot of the time because they don’t know what classes to
take and need help choosing the right classes at the right time for their major. If a paper for
classes was provided that was like a program evaluation and told students what classes to take
and when it could benefit them, making regestration easier on everyone.
13. Making the Academic Advising Office a Better Environment 9
In the Academic Advising office there is a range of different students who work there. Most
student workes have different majors and skils. One thing Leah mentioned to imporve the
workplace would be to better utilize our student workers use our talents to their advantage. This
would be benefitial to the office and the students by giving them more exciting work that they
like and helping with other areas in the office.
As an example for this if someone was a Comminication major and they wanted to update the
social media platforms about the Academic Adiving office, putting that person in charge of that
would benefit the office and the student. This is because in class they are learning about social
media and how busineses can use it to their advantage. The student could take the information
they are learning and use the Academic Advising social media pages for practice. This would
create awareness or the accounts for students to follow. This will keep students up to date on
events and things going on in the office.
Conclusion and Recommendations
The Academic Advising office is a friendly environment for students to come and feel welcome.
There are always things to change and make better at an office. By providing better training,
making more documents available online, and small steps to improve the overall atmosphere,
this office would run more efficiently.
From doing my research and getting information from people in the office and students there are
multiple suggestions on ways to improve the Academic Advising Office. Some of these are
simple thing that could be easily changes and helpful for students and faculty, while others may
take more time to complete. The Academic Advising Office is a great environment and doesn’t
need all of these changes right now. As things change in the future and other improvements
gradually happen these could be some things to fix along the way.
To start making simple changes for the next year to improve the office you could start with 4
simple steps:
1. Peer training for incoming student workers: For new student workers starting in the
office next year it would be a good idea for them to shadow a student worker who has
been here for a while. They could train them on forms, phone calls, and unpleasant
students and parents. This would be easier to learn from someone who has gone through
it on their own recently.
2. Make more forms available online: Putting forms on MySNHU with a description of
what they do will make it easier for students to change their programs along with
reducing traffic going through the office.
3. Adding a new system to book appointments (in process): This will make it easier for
students to book and change appointments. It will be easier for students to do this online
instead of calling or coming into the office.
4. Adding more walk-in hours for upperclassmen: Making more hours available will make it
easier for upperclassmen to change their programs on their time. Betweeen classes, jobs,
14. Making the Academic Advising Office a Better Environment 10
internships, clubs etc., students are busy and a lot of the time they cant make it to such a
small walk-in window. Adding extra hours was the most requested on the survey I
handed out.
It can be hard to make changed around an office. Not everyone likes change and it can be difficult
and sometimes expensive to make these changes. Some of these are small changes that can
significantly improve the office and efficientcy of working going on inside of it.
15. Making the Academic Advising Office a Better Environment 11
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