Students at Johns Hopkins rely on a wide array of academic and administrative services from the moment they apply to the university through graduation and beyond. In 2016, the JHU launched the Student Services Excellence Initiative (SSEI), which focused on an assessment of six key administrative areas of student services: Recruitment & Admissions, Financial Aid, Billing, Registration, Advising, and Career Services & Alumni Tracking.
The driving factor for this project initially was to redesign and replace our student information system. The current system is challenged by functional weaknesses and is quickly becoming outdated, no longer meeting the needs of students, faculty, and staff in a world of rapidly changing, increasingly mobile, technology. Extensive pre-work and analysis prior to replacing the SIS revealed the need for process improvements and alignment across these six functional areas – a technology solution alone would not be successful at addressing the key underlying issues.
As more and more of our students are “digital natives” who have grown up in a world where information and services are easily accessible at the push of a button, we committed to an evolution to best meet their needs and expectations. Thus, the focus of SSEI shifted to an experience perspective rather than that of technology replacement – an emphasis on how people interact with systems, and how we might make process and technology enhancements to improve this experience for our students and those who support them.