OSF Culture of Consultation Working Group outcomes

A group of Office of Student Finance (OSF) and One Stop staff worked in fits and spurts over the past eighteen months to help improve and strengthen partnerships within OSF, and between OSF and One Stop. The discussions themselves were useful in building mutual understanding and positive working relationships, and here are some concrete outcomes to share.
  

• On-going, regular effort to offer OSF unit training/updates to One Stop staff
• Developed contact maps-- detailed lists of staff and their work responsibilities per OSF unit to direct One Stop Counselors to the most appropriate OSF staff member for each individual case.
• Used a shared document, the new Fraser 200 Staff List, to house the contact maps in a single Google doc to be continually updated as staff and duties change.  
• The OSF Undergrad Services unit is piloting the use of Chat to show their availability for phone transfers, with the goal of increasing student service and successful warm transfers. 

Please take a look at the expanded Fraser Front Desk Resource document.  You can look for staff by duty, by unit, or by name using the tabs at the bottom of the page.  The group hopes that these resources and programs will help improve effective referrals and build on our positive working relationships. 

If you believe this type of ‘function-based’ document would be useful across ASR, please let Tina Falkner know.

MyU user interface updates

MyU is currently undertaking an effort to update the user interface of MyU, including:

• Streamlining and improving technical components
• Refreshing overall design
• Improving non-tab navigation and the mobile experience

The expected go-live date is October 22. The MyU team encourages you to view mock-ups for the new MyU design and provide feedback via the MyU Portal UI Refresh Project website before June 16.

Tillman Scholars announced

The Pat Tillman Foundation has announced their 2017 Tillman Scholars class. This year’s scholarship recipients include two University of Minnesota students, Britt Johnson and Elizabeth Abbott. Elizabeth, an ASR employee in University Veterans Services, will be working on a Master’s degree in Social work with an anticipated completion date of May 2019. Britt is pursuing a Master’s degree in Nursing and will finish in December 2017. Awards range from $10,000 for one semester to $20,000 for two years and are for student veterans or service members. Winners from schools across the country will be attending the Pat Tillman Leadership Summit at Roosevelt University in Chicago, Illinois, from July 20-23, 2017.

Streamlining business processes - new ASR-IT documentation

The Project & Work Facilitation (PWF) team has created two new documents for ASR-IT onboarding and reporting processes.

As a solution to a major pain point in the onboarding process, the new ASR-IT Access Request Guide was created to alleviate the frustration, headaches, and forgotten items when requesting/granting access for new employees to our various systems. This new guide streamlines onboarding, provides a common language to prevent discrepancies, includes links for ARFs, and provides comprehensive instructions for all the ASR-IT Teams (and the Academic Advisement BA team) access needs. This guide is available for any other unit to use as a template to create their own access guide for their staff.

The new FY18 ASR-IT Accomplishments document consolidates the old tracking document down to three sections, and each business group within IT reports on the same form, rather than having six individual documents. ASR-IT staff, please remember to start logging accomplishments on this new document and follow the indicated directions. If this format is useful for your unit, please feel free to copy this document as a template.  

If you have any questions, please contact Ryan & Kristy at pwf-team@umn.edu.

WiFi upgrades to take place in Williamson and Fraser

Work is ongoing for the Next Generation Network (NGN) project and WiFi access point upgrades are continuing on the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus from May through August 2017. Service disruption is expected to be minimal.

You can view the WiFi upgrade schedule here. Please note that buildings are still being scheduled and that the schedule is subject to change.

Adobe updates incoming

During the week of July 17, 2017, OIT will be performing a mass update of all Adobe Acrobat and Reader versions (including Acrobat and Reader XI and all previous versions of Adobe Acrobat and Reader) to Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader DC. This mass update will affect all OIT centrally-managed devices (Windows and Mac) and all devices that OIT patches, including system campuses, Carlson School of Management, College of Education and Human Development (CEHD), and College of Science and Engineering (CSE) systems.

In October 2017, Adobe Acrobat and Reader XI will no longer be updated or supported by Adobe.

If you are using an unmanaged device, you can download Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader DC now. Contact the Technology Help desk for your campus with questions or for assistance.

ASR Accomplishments and Goals

ASR’s 2016-17 accomplishments and 2017-18 goals are now available on the ASR intranet (linked on the home page). Each spring, Sue presents this information to Bob McMaster. He is especially proud of both the quantity and quality of work that ASR does. Take a look at the listed accomplishments (detailed descriptions can be found in the handout) to see how your unit contributed. Both accomplishments and goals are organized by the areas of focus defined in ASR's strategic direction.