Laura Czyzewski

Higher Education Practicum

EDLD 8735 01F
March 6, 2016

Midterm Reflection
1. Describe your practicum environment. Identify your mentor, other
employees, clients served, and the organization itself. Identify some ways you
initially tried to orient yourself to and gain acceptance within the
organization. Rank your practicum experience thus far on a scale of 0-5 with
0= poor and 5= outstanding
For my practicum, I have been charged with taking a look at our process for
putting together the Schedule of Classes for the Scheller College of Business
at the Georgia Institute of Technology. As of Fall 2015, 2036 students were
enrolled in the business school among the undergraduate program, Full-time
MBA, Evening MBA, Executive MBA, Interdisciplinary degrees in Quantitative
and Computational Finance and Analytics, and PhD programs. The Schedule
of Classes for the college is currently managed by one staff member in the
Undergraduate Program Office, which is who I have been working with most
closely on this project. My mentor is the Director of the Undergraduate
Program Office, who is playing a more observational role in the process. For
purpose of this midterm assignment, I will discuss my interactions with the
current scheduler as well as my mentor, as I think that discussion will be
more relevant.
When I first approached my mentor and asked about the possibility of doing a
practicum assignment with his office, I did not expect that I would be working
on the Schedule of Classes. I thought I would gain some insight into working
with an undergraduate student population and would do some shadow
academic advising or something along those lines. Im very happy, however,
that this project was chosen for me. It has proven to be exciting, daunting,
and more relevant than I could have imagined. I have the opportunity to
make a very large impact on how this process works in the future. My mentor
warned that the current scheduler is a bit frenetic, disorganized, and feels a
bit underappreciated, so it was important to me to bring a sense of calm to
our initial meeting, but also engage her in the spirit of true collaboration so
she didnt feel as though I was coming in to highjack her process. Fortunately,
she agreed that the current process is in need of an overhaul and was very
open-minded to the idea of having someone look at the way things are being
done in the hopes of streamlining the process to make it more efficient. I
think she understands that the benefit will hopefully be to make this easier
and less complicated going forward.

If I had to grade my experience thus far, I would give it a 4.5 out of 5. I will
discuss further in the question about what has been most eye-opening in
greater detail, but I really am going to play a significant part in this process
and how it works in the future. There are rumors that central campus is going
to regulate how all Colleges of the university schedule their classes, and this
is going to ultimately change what we do in the business school. Because of
this, there has been a recognition by the leadership of the business school to
create a more defined means of scheduling while also keeping a degree of
flexibility for any changes.
2.) Discuss/reflect upon at least one of the components of your portfolio and
its application to your practicum experience and/or a work experience .
One of the standards we are asked to demonstrate as a result of going
through the MEd program is a commitment to the utilization of technology. As
part of this practicum, I have been asked to research different technologies
that could be used to make this process more efficient. I decided to reach out
to other schedulers across campus to see what they are using and see if I
could take away any ideas. I met with two colleagues, one from our Civil
Engineering department and another from the School of Industrial and
Systems Engineering. What I learned is that each department has its own
individual means of handling the schedule, and that none are using an actual
scheduling-specific software. Most are using Excel spreadsheets to put their
schedules together.
In looking at their processes, I saw the benefit of having a predetermined/fixed 2-year schedule in place, with enough flexibility for the
inevitable adjustments that come with new faculty, buy-outs, etc. The current
scheduler in the business school also uses Excel spreadsheets that she sends
to area coordinators, of which there are 9 or 10. The major downfall with this
process is that once they send the spreadsheets back, it is cumbersome to
combine all of the information. Since I do not have a budget for this
practicum nor can I find a higher education-specific scheduling tool that I
think will fit our needs appropriately, I decided it best to build a schedule in
Excel that can be put on cloud-based Microsoft OneDrive as a live document.
This will allow all schedulers to input their information in real time into one
single workbook, which includes a master sheet of the rooms in the building. I
think this will save a great deal of time and frustration, and at the same time,
will incentivize the faculty area coordinators to supply their information
quickly, since some of the rooms may be claimed on a first-come, first-served
basis. It can also serve to move any negotiations to happen between the area
coordinators and away from the scheduler, reducing some of the politics
dealt with each semester by the scheduler. I am currently building a schedule
in OneDrive based on the Fall 2015 class schedule and will be presenting it
next week for feedback.

3.) What has been the biggest eye-opener from your experience thus far?
Explain your response.
Just this past week, I was invited to a meeting with the Senior Associate Dean
of the Business School, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Programs, the
Director of Undergraduate Programs (my mentor), the current scheduler, the
Director of MBA programs and the Evening MBA program manager. I was
invited as a result of my practicum assignment. The discussion centered
around the potential movement of central academic scheduling, which is now
housed in our office of Capital Planning and Space Management to our
universitys Registrars Office. Our Senior Associate Dean led the meeting by
telling us about the task force he is on, with other faculty, to give their input
on the campus-wide scheduling process. The business school is under
particular scrutiny because we hold our classes at non-traditional class times.
Our students, for the most part, do not have Friday classes, with 1.5 hour
classes on Monday/Wednesdays and Tuesday/Thursdays. The result of this is
empty classroom space on Fridays, which administrators on main campus
view as poor classroom optimization.
What was gratifying and most eye-opening about this meeting, was that,
despite not knowing beforehand of the greater political implication of this
process, that my idea for fixed 2year schedule was discussed as one solution
to the efficiency problem. I also pitched my idea for a cloud-based
spreadsheet to build the structure of the schedule, and the group was in
agreement that it could work well. I explained that it could be easily adjusted
to fit whatever is coming down the pipeline from central administration if we
need to adjust to a more traditional Monday/Wednesday/Friday model. I can
build the fall 2015 schedule as a mock fall 2016 schedule in OneDrive and we
can adjust it accordingly from there. Again, it looks as though I will get to
make a major impact on this entire process, far beyond my expectations
when I first approached my mentor.
4.) How is your and your mentors administrative philosophy the same? How
is it different? Explain your responses.
My mentor and I are in direct agreement that the current scheduling process
is quite a mess. I can tell he is frustrated with the current scheduler and her
process, as well as some of the excuses she gives for why it is so
complicated. Because of this, I can tell he is counting on me to make her job
easier since she cant seem to do it herself. In her defense, the current
scheduler has been doing things the same for years. She has gone above and
beyond to make sure that core classes do not conflict with each other, which
is one area we are in strong agreement. It is important to look at the schedule
from a big-picture perspective so that students are able to move through the
curriculum in a timely manner. We want them to graduate in the normal 4year time frame to avoid additional debt and prevent drain on university
resources.

Where my mentor and I differ in philosophy is that we need to be sensitive

when working with the scheduler. She is incredibly protective of the
scheduling process. I have explained my calm and collaborative approach in
dealing with her, and he is appreciative that I am willing to work with her with
a great deal of patience.
My philosophy and approach to dealing with the scheduler is quite a bit
different. She wants to tailor the schedule to faculty preferences. I, on the
other hand, think that the schedule should be fixed based on the previous
year (which should automatically roll preferences), and then tell the faculty
that additional preferences are not guaranteed. What is great is that I have
the buy-in from the Senior Associate Dean on that, based on the meeting this
week. There is a lack of faculty willing to teach at 8am. The Senior Associate
Dean said that he will enforce the fixed schedule and do what is necessary to
make sure we are optimizing the building space, even if that means requiring
faculty to teach at non-optimal times. If we can optimize our building space,
it may take some of the pressure of us from central administration.
5.) Identify areas in which you wish you had more content knowledge or
skills to better perform within your practicum experience. Explain the areas
and the reasons.
I still have a lot to learn about the nuances of this process. For example, I
know that we have an undergraduate Technology and Management
program, which is an interdisciplinary program between students in the
College of Computing and the College of Business. We have various centers,
for example our Institute for Leadership and Entrepreneurship, that require
classroom space for certain events. I need to make sure that adjusting this
process will not negatively impact the needs of some of this non-degreespecific programming.
Additionally, our MBA program has recently undergone a move from the
traditional 3-hour semester-long format to 1.5 credit classes in which they
take 2 pairs per semester. I do not fully understand how this has/is going to
impact the schedule and I need to do some more research to make sure I am
pairing classes appropriately.
Finally, I wish I had greater skills in using Excel so that I could be a little more
creative with the spreadsheet design. That being said, perhaps it is to our
advantage to keep it simple. I think the message here is that we need to
simplify rather than complicate this already involved process. I look forward
to the months to come and to showing the final project to my mentor and the
rest of the administrators/students in the business school.