Financial aid, admissions merge
As of Oct. 1, the Office of Admissions and Records and the Financial Aid Office have been consolidated. Three main factors motivated the merge: efficiency, customer service and budget concerns.
While the Office of Admissions, Records and Financial Aid has a new name and a supervisor with an updated title to reflect the administrative decision, cross training and physical consolidation have not yet begun.
Dr. Douglas Samuels, vice provost for student affairs, said there won’t be any change in staff as a result of the merge.
“I saw a need to have the services combined,” Samuels said.
He said that students were frustrated with all the running around they had to do between the two offices in order to get their questions answered and their records straight. With the offices combined, Samuels expects that students will be able to get their questions answered more quickly and without the hassle.
“I’m trying to make it easier for you guys,” he said.
Agnes Hoffman, formerly the director of admissions and records and now the associate vice provost for enrollment management and student affairs, said that a “one-stop shop” makes more sense than separate offices because the departments overlap to such an extent. She believes it will be better for students to have one service area where all their admissions and financial aid questions can be answered.
“It’s our mission to serve students more responsively,” Hoffman said. “If it’s a good student experience, then we’ve done our job right.”
Samuels feels the merge will streamline services while giving rise to stronger, more innovative and more creative activities. He said combining the departments means more people to move things faster and add thinking power.
There are other models of “one-stop shops,” but, as Samuel Collie, executive director of admissions, records and financial aid, pointed out, the more successful ones have resources Portland State University doesn’t, such as additional space.
“The current space configuration limits our ability to design a workspace that is both welcoming to students and functionally efficient. We’ll have to live within this limitation,” Collie said.
PSU has the largest student population in Oregon and has seen seven consecutive years of growth, several of which were record years for enrollment. Enrollment is up one-third since 1996.
This growth is occurring at the same time the budget is waning. Hoffman and Collie expect the merge to increase efficiency and help to offset the strain caused by budget problems.
“It challenges us to be smarter about the way we work. But it’s a good challenge,” Hoffman said.
New technologies that will be introduced include a document scanning system, to be implemented in the next 18 months. Scanning will cut down on hard copies that have to be tracked and filed, thereby saving space and time. The Office of Admissions, Records and Financial Aid will also start accepting applications and transcripts electronically from partner schools such as Portland Community College. These measures will eliminate a lot of data entry.
In order for the merge to be successful, cross training of the front-end staff will be necessary. This may cause initial confusion, but Samuels, Hoffman and Collie agree that the staff is energetic and capable.
Training will be especially important for those employees who answer phones or work at information windows.
Collie is sensitive to staff members’ concerns about the organizational changes.
“They worry about job security, they worry about how their work environment will change, they worry about having a new supervisor, and, perhaps most importantly, they worry about being successful in a new organizational structure. It’s the job of management to help every staff person succeed,” Collie said.
