Starting Semester: Spring 2022 Assigned: Yes Location: Atlanta
Georgia Tech Office of Graduate Studies
Client Profile
Georgia Tech is a public research university with enrollment of over 42,000 students, with 25,000 being graduate students. Over 17,000 of the graduate students are enrolled in one of the Online Masters of Science programs, which has seen a growth of enrollment of 25%-45% per year. The Office of Graduate Studies (OGS) is a central administration unit at Georgia Tech that is responsible for verifying that all admitted graduate students meet the academic requirements for admission and enrollment. Unlike undergraduate admissions, the graduate admissions process is distributed with part of the decision process being done in one of 95 different academic units and the rest being done centrally in OGC.
Project Description
Client Needs: Due to the growth in applications and enrollment, the workload for the OGS has increased by 127% in five years while the funding for the unit has increased by only 56%. The demand for the services that OGS provides (ie, processing applications) is outpacing the ability and capacity to provide those services. As a result, the quality of services is decreasing and the staff are fatigued (they have been working overtime for months). OGS needs process improvements that may include restructuring its organization and processes so that it is scalable with the growth in enrollment, while meeting service quality metrics with reasonable workload estimates for the staff. OGS also needs to develop a reasonable funding model that can predict the service volume in the future and put a plan in place to build the capacity to match the projected growth in demand. Some typical service quality metrics include: * Processing time per application * Processing delays (due to backlog) * Accuracy * Having 100% of applications processed before registration starts * Customer satisfaction (applicants, and academic programs)
Skills
Process Improvement, time studies, data analysis, predictive analytics, problem solving, and creative thinking
