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Jeff Von Munkwitz-Smith Talks Technology

Featured in the June 4, 2007 Memberlink

Jeff Von Munkwitz-Smith is University Registrar at the University of Connecticut in Storrs , Connecticut . Previously, Jeff held various positions in the Office of the Registrar at the University of Minnesota where he worked for more than 20 years.

Jeff has served as Conference Director for the AACRAO Technology Conference since 2004. He is a regular presenter on topics relating to educational records privacy, student services, and the implementation of administrative information technology.

Memberlink: Hi Jeff. First, why don't you start off by telling us how you got started in this profession?

Jeff: After graduating from college, I took a job in the registrar's office at the University of Minnesota . My job was to handwrite transcripts. There was no technology involved – but I did have an electric eraser. When I took the job, I had been planning to leave in a year for either law school or graduate school in religious studies. A professor recommended I try Sanskrit. I did and I liked it – but there were very few jobs or assistantships teaching Sanskrit, so I stayed in the registrar's office.

I enjoyed working with students and eventually I got involved in a project to redesign the university's old student information system (SIS). I stayed at the University of Minnesota for 22 years, eventually finishing my Ph.D.

I then moved to Connecticut to be closer to my aging parents. At the time, the school was preparing to go through many changes. So far, in the last ten years, the university has spent well over a billion dollars on campus construction. We've grown by a third in enrollment at the same time we've improved our retention and graduation rates. Also, there have been lots of changes to the organizational structure and we've built a new student services center. It's been fun.

Memberlink: What kinds of technology changes or advances have you observed since you started at the University of Connecticut ?

Jeff: The campus has moved from using a homegrown student information system that didn't really meet the needs of the institution to implementing Peoplesoft. We also implemented a data warehouse and moved our registration from touch-tone telephone to online. We continue to roll out more online services to the community, faculty, staff, and students.

We've just made it possible for instructors to make changes to grades online and automatically notify students and administrators of the change and the reason for change. That's been a very popular development for the faculty and students. At the same time, it's eliminated some data entry in my office.

Memberlink: Generally, what new technologies do you think will affect campuses in the next few years?

Jeff: I think we are going to continue to see more and more services being made available online – here and everywhere else. We'll begin to see interfaces to our administrative systems tailored to handheld devices, like PDAs and cell phones. I remember having a conversation about technology with my students last fall and they were most interested in being able to register from their cell phones.

Also, I think we'll see expanded use of decision support processes that use data we already have in our system. In this way, we'll be able to help administrators, faculty, and students make decisions. There are some sessions at this year's Tech Conference that talk about just that. In a session from the University of Vermont, the presenter will talk about how his campus analyzed student registration activity and used it to help academic departments decide on course offerings for upcoming semesters (search on 'Why Can't I Register for this Course?': Analyzing Registration Transactions to Support Academic Planning ). There's also a session on integrating academic planning with registration (search on The Next Wave of Web Registration: Integrating Academic Planning with Registration ) .

One of the things the University of Connecticut has done for a few years is to offer a program called Advising Contours . We use this program with quantitative courses that freshmen commonly take, like science and math. First, we looked back on first semester student performance in those particular courses and determined what the best predictors are for student success. We found that high school SAT scores and student rank are generally the best predictors and created charts and a Web interface.

The Web interface allows students to pick a class, input their SAT score and rank, and get a prediction of how well they might do based on historical performance of students with similar profiles. They can then decide if they should take the course, the level of effort needed, and proceed from there.

Memberlink: In the news and at AACRAO , there has been much discussion lately on disaster preparedness. From a technology point of view, what do you recommend institutions do to protect themselves?

Jeff: In the last few weeks, since the tragedy at Virginia Tech, many institutions are looking at how to manage emergency communications. Institutions are looking at text messaging capabilities as one component of that emergency communication. Once you have that capability, you may start out using it in emergencies but find other applications for it as well. That's something that we'll see more and more of over the next few years.

I'm on a committee here looking at emergency communications. There's another committee looking at unintended releases of data if the system is attacked, or someone loses a laptop. You need to be paying attention to this in advance and have plans for how you'll respond. There's a session on business continuity planned for the conference (search on Building a Business Continuity Program on Campus .)

Memberlink: There's been a move over the last few years to make the Technology Conference broader. The focus is no longer strictly on Student Information Systems or EDI and XML. What do you think about this?

Jeff: The lines between administrative and academic computing are more blurred now than ever before. For example, this past year I've been involved in an effort on campus relating to personal response systems. These are clickers that are used in the classroom to provide instructors with feedback on student understanding of material. The instructor will ask questions and students can use clickers to respond. Classroom software then analyzes the responses and faculty can determine whether students have grasped the concepts. I've used it to stimulate discussion in the freshman seminar I teach each fall.

I got involved in this effort because I was interested in using it in my teaching, but found that being involved also benefited the registrar's office. Traditionally this software would be considered an academic computing issue, but it also intersects with administrative computing. Our office would get involved with questions like figuring out how to keep track of the clickers, what technology is available in what classroom, and how faculty could request the software. It's better to be involved in the ground floor with some of these things than to find out later and have to adapt.

Another example is course management systems. In the early days, these were seen exclusively as academic computing. But there are some issues that could be solved more easily if administrative computing is involved from the beginning, like how to populate classes and how to integrate the software more tightly with the SIS.

Memberlink: This is your third year managing the AACRAO Technology Conference . What have been some of the biggest changes and/or improvements?

Jeff: When I took the conference on, it was already changing from what was primarily a SPEEDE/EDI conference to a broader technology conference. My goal was to accelerate the transition and bring in people from student services as well as from departments across campus that support student systems. Some of my interests have been:

Identity and access management;
Open source student systems; and
Customer Relationship Management.

We started out with a plenary on Open Source at the first conference. This year, we'll be offering a couple sessions on Open Source in addition to a roundtable. We'll also have a workshop, two or three sessions, and a roundtable on identity management.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is something I've been interested in more recently. The university implemented a CRM this past year. We initially purchased it intending to use it for the whole student lifecycle but starting with student recruitment and admissions. We're still discovering the many uses for it. For example, responsibility for summer programs has recently shifted to my office from the continuing education division. We've used the CRM to market summer programs to our continuing undergraduates. At the Tech Conference, there are three sessions offered on CRM and a roundtable. I'm hoping that will draw people from admissions as well as other departments thinking about using CRM.

Personally, I'm excited to use it to help with our retention and graduation efforts. I think it will help us contact students earlier and see if they're having problems. I see lots of possibilities. Right now, we're talking with alumni and athletics to see if it can help with their marketing needs.

Memberlink: Can you tell me a bit more about some of the speakers at the Technology Conference?

This year, besides Michael Rogers, we have Bob Kvavik. Bob's a visionary. Throughout his career at Minnesota , he has been known for making things happen. Many years ago, a colleague and I showed him a paper publication that we had produced and put on the Internet. This was in the early days of the Web. We didn't expect much response. But Bob replied with, “This is going to change the way we do business.” He called my boss a few days later and gave him funding to start hiring web developers. Bob isn't afraid to follow his vision and make things happen.

Becky King is head of administrative computing and the interim CEO at Baylor University . She will talk about how we got to where we are in computing. Becky's really smart and a great presenter. She won the “Best Presentation” award again and again at CUMREC and has been involved in EDUCause for many years. She makes her point with humor and has been involved in administrative computing in higher education for over 25 years.

Memberlink: Is there anything else you want to mention to people?

Jeff: I'm really excited about the program this year. It has been good for the last couple of years but I like the spread of topics this year. We received some very good presentations from the public, in addition to the ones coming from the SPEEDE Committee, the Information Technology Committee, and ones I recruited. There are multiple sessions I'd like to personally attend in every single timeslot.

I'm looking forward to it. I lived in the Twin Cities for 27 years between college and grad school and working at the university. I think July in Minneapolis is the prettiest time there. We'll be downtown, close to many, many good restaurants, music venues, shopping, and the Metrodome, the home of the Minnesota Twins baseball team.

The AACRAO Technology Conference will be held July 15-17 in Minneapolis , Minnesota .

For more information, go to www.aacrao.org/tech/.

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