As part of President Hitt's Operational Excellence Initiative, the UCF 21 project seeks to develop a systems level view of student services and generate recommendations to measureably improve the delivery of student services and increase student satisfaction with these services.

Project Description

This project addresses the need to take a systems level view of various student-related functions at the University of Central Florida in order to perform a more systematic and systemic analysis of student services and develop recommended changes or additions with the intended outcomes of improving the delivery of student services and increasing student satisfaction with those services. UCF is a growing metropolitan university that serves a large and diverse student body, having grown beyond 27,000 students in the past thirty years. Some of these students are traditional full-time undergraduates who live in university residence halls, while others are part-time students who work full-time jobs and take evening or videotaped classes at remote locations. The explosive growth in student enrollment has been accompanied by different needs that the various types of students have at different times in their education at UCF. To achieve operational excellence and be a model for metropolitan universities, UCF must reexamine the various systems that drive and support student services. The customer focus on students that must underlie this review for the future of UCF is the driving force for this project: University’s Customer Focus for the 21st Century (UCF-21).

President Hitt, in the UCF Strategic Plan, Charting the Course 1996-2001, identified "achieve operational excellence" as one of the four strategic directions for the university. The plan emphasized that the University of Central Florida continues to experience rapid growth and a significant annual increase in the number of students to be served on campus. There are continuing changes in procedures that have been or will be implemented throughout the campus to attempt to serve this increasing student population effectively, and the strategic plan calls for further improvements. The "Cycles" survey and other surveys indicate a high level of student satisfaction with most academic issues, but the survey results show lower levels of satisfaction with areas generally classified as "student services." Anecdotal information from students, faculty, and staff suggest that there are continuing problems with financial aid and the practice of registration "holds."

In 1992, the University established the Office of Quality Management (Quality Initiatives) as an initial effort to help assess administrative processes and work with the "process owners" to improve their processes. The fundamental idea of "continuous improvement" has provided the foundation for these efforts. Since its founding, the office has worked with numerous groups, generally at the direct provider level, to develop methods for process improvement. However, it has become clear that some of the remaining problems will require some facilitation at higher levels and require a broader systems perspective that spans across various functions within UCF.

Recognizing that need, during the Fall 1996 semester, the Provost convened a Student Services Improvement Team chaired by an Assistant Vice-President for Academic Affairs and charged the team with the task of looking at ways for improving, coordinating, and fostering cooperation in UCF’s student services areas. The team, consisting of members from the major student services areas, identified seven areas that it believes should be addressed in order to improve services to students. These areas include: Academic Advising, Academic Advising Staffing, Non-Curricular Information, Orientation Improvement, Student Financial Assistance Staffing, Student Holds, and Student Services Staffing. The SSIT recommended that several areas be selected from this list for the initial effort and teams be formed in each area to conduct the assessment. During the process used to identify and develop the seven issues listed above, the SSIT developed an extensive list of issues that involve all aspects of student life. Addressing those issues is left to future teams. Recently, the Provost met with the Vice-Presidents and it was decided to proceed with teams for Non-Curricular Information, Academic Advising, Student Holds and Orientation. These four areas cross different organizational functions. The UCF-21 project team will interact with these improvement teams, and the Office of Quality Initiatives will be available to those teams to provide guidance on approaches that can be used.

The teams, consisting of members from various organizational functions, will be able to identify opportunities for improvement in the different areas, but they may not be able to integrate the solutions and affect the process owner. It is clear that the members of the four teams will have a lot of knowledge about their processes and their knowledge will be invaluable input into finding workable solutions. However, there is a need for a systems view of student services.

The above approach and the four improvement teams are approaching the problems from a bottom up perspective. This approach has a benefit of enhancing communication and understanding across the organizational functions as members of each team attempt to find improvements to the processes that they own. However, this bottom up approach will likely be ineffective in identifying and addressing more systemic issues where there are multiple and interdependent process owners. The Provost has expressed a desire to have another effort that examines student services from a global systems perspective. This project responds to that request.

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