Case Study: The Art Institute of Austin
My career path led me to The Art Institute of Austin in 2009, where I was challenged with transitioning a small, yet booming college campus into an established area of higher learning, complete with dedicated processes and procedures. Not only was I needed to advise the now 1400+ students, but I was brought on for my PR/Marketing background.
I was asked by then-president of The Art Institute of Austin, Newton Myvett, and former Dean of Academic Affairs, Carol Kelley, to create better lines of communication between the campus departments and the population, identifying areas of opportunity and better connect with the student population.
The mission was clear: I had exactly 1 year to show my results and note the many ways I improved in these areas.
I utilized our quarterly events where students can voice their concerns to the campus leadership, "Dine with the Deans" and "President Roundtable" by turning them into my own focus groups. This helped in identifying the main problems I needed to solve with the campus and its students/faculty/staff:
*Registration was a huge area of opportunity. Because of the student-to-advisor ratio (nearly 850:1), there was a near impossibility to provide an adequate amount of customer service/advising to each student. Students would write their class choices and submit them into Academic Affairs, where it would often take weeks at a time to get back to the student on whether their class choices were the right ones for their program or not.
*Our society is evolving, progressing, constantly finding and creating the next revolution to continue our evolution. This certainly applies to technology and we are now experiencing that with the Digital Age. The Art Institute of Austin had fallen behind in this aspect when trying to communicate with the student population: not embracing social media, not adopting online tools and resources, and no plan in place to begin to address this serious issue.
I was asked by then-president of The Art Institute of Austin, Newton Myvett, and former Dean of Academic Affairs, Carol Kelley, to create better lines of communication between the campus departments and the population, identifying areas of opportunity and better connect with the student population.
The mission was clear: I had exactly 1 year to show my results and note the many ways I improved in these areas.
I utilized our quarterly events where students can voice their concerns to the campus leadership, "Dine with the Deans" and "President Roundtable" by turning them into my own focus groups. This helped in identifying the main problems I needed to solve with the campus and its students/faculty/staff:
*Registration was a huge area of opportunity. Because of the student-to-advisor ratio (nearly 850:1), there was a near impossibility to provide an adequate amount of customer service/advising to each student. Students would write their class choices and submit them into Academic Affairs, where it would often take weeks at a time to get back to the student on whether their class choices were the right ones for their program or not.
*Our society is evolving, progressing, constantly finding and creating the next revolution to continue our evolution. This certainly applies to technology and we are now experiencing that with the Digital Age. The Art Institute of Austin had fallen behind in this aspect when trying to communicate with the student population: not embracing social media, not adopting online tools and resources, and no plan in place to begin to address this serious issue.