Staff News from DES
NEW STAFF
Gretchen Voight - Assistant Registrar for Ceremonies
Annie Fitzsimmons - Admission Counselor
Sarah Spooner - Admission Counselor
Joe Davis - Admission Counselor
Brittney Joyce - Admission Counselor
Pam Fincher - Senior Business Systems Analyst for AA Module
STAFF LEAVING
Alan Bordelon - Student Financial Services
Chadd Bridwell - Admission
Diana McAfee - Admission
Michael Gomez - Admission
Chris
Sekerke - Academic Advisement/Registrar
Staffing Changes
Jennifer Crosthwait - Houston Regional Admission
The Summer I Enrollment Reports for 2006 are available here (within the "Current Term" link)
http://www.smu.edu/intranet/des/
Summer Reports include Student Headcount, Credit Hours, and Degrees Awarded in May. Summer Session II numbers are included but do not become final until the second release.
Remaining Schedule:
July 03 - First day of Summer Session II classes.
July 07 - Summer II Census Date
July 11 - Enrollment Reports Release #2
New Textbook Link
Beginning on June 30, the textbook link is available through student self-serve ACCESS.SMU to assist students identifying books available for a specific class. “View Textbooks” link is available:
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At the bottom of View My Schedule page
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At the bottom of View My Class Schedule page
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At the bottom of Add Classes page
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At the top and bottom of Class Search Results page
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At the top and bottom of Class Search Detail page
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On the Registrar’s Home Page under each available term the link “View Textbooks” appears after Campus Essentials.
This enhancement adds to the many functions that are
available to assist students in the enrollment process.
Academic Advising, Registration, and Orientation
To launch the AARO season Enrollment Services partnered with Student Affairs to revive the tradition of having a University-wide kick off before the first AARO session. With the cooperation of Mother Nature, an Ice Cream Social on the lawn in front of Clements Hall provided the perfect way to rally the SMU community in preparation for this important time of the year.
Using the Orientation Theme – Become the Spirit -- buttons, cups, and tip cards reminded faculty and staff that we are the Spirit of SMU. In addition to a remarks by President Gerald Turner, a skit the AARO Student Leaders MCed by Provost ad interim Tom Tunks, participants were served Ice Cream by celebrity dippers which included Dana Gibson; VP of Business and Finance; Dee Sisco, Dean of Student Life, Vicki Hill, Director of the Altshuler Learning Enhancement Center; Major Rick Shafer, Assistant Chief of SMU Police; Joe Gargiulo, Executive Director of Administrative Computing; Judith Banes, Director of the Dedman Center; John Hall, University Registrar; and Jose Bowen, the new Dean of the Meadows School of the Arts. Missy Bryant, Director of New Student Programs provided information on Orientation programs and encouraged staff and faculty to assist in welcoming new students to campus.
Another aspect of the Kick Off was the Spirit of SMU Contest. Participants at the Ice Cream Social were asked to complete a card finishing the sentence: “The Spirit of SMU is represented by . . .” Each week between the Kick Off and the opening of the fall term, one entry will be selected. The author of that entry will be surprised with a gift bag delivered by the staff in New Student Programs. The entry and a photo of the author will be placed on “The Spirit of SMU” website.
Approximately 500 staff, faculty, and students made the revival of the AARO Kick Off a great success. People from all of campus enjoyed the opportunity to visit and to prepare for another wonderful year in the life of SMU.
July AARO
A Fantastic Opportunity
The Division of Enrollment Service working with New Student Programs has seized the opportunity of July AARO to provide proactive initiatives to offer information and services to families while they are on campus. The focus of these initiatives is to make the transition of the new student to the University as smooth as possible. Families are encouraged to complete and return the Student Release of Student Education Records, sign up for Authorized Payer for Student Accounts, to meet with a Student Account Specialist or Financial Aid Advisor to insure that charges can be resolved by the payment due date, and to reinforce the importance of regularly checking the SMU Electronic Mail account.
Staff from Enrollment Services participated in each July AARO session through an information session, the Resource Expo, and Open House. Staff also was available in the Hughes-Trigg to set up Authorized Payer and to make appointment for families to meet with Student Account Staff. Although the full impact of the efforts will not be realized until later in the year the participation of families in the programs has been significant. Over 250 students in one week set up their parents to be Authorized Payers and Student Accounts has had as many as 26 appointments from AARO families in one day.
VIPs -
Very Important Ponies
Some of our VIPs this month are:
Cheryl Swift -I
would like to thank you for all your help last Saturday while we were at AARO
and for your follow up with the Athletic Department to get everything worked out
prior to billing coming through. It is this kind of help and attention to
things that make me very happy to be sending Jaime off to Dallas to attend and
swim for SMU. I am truly impressed with everyone we met at SMU and how much
support and attention to details all of you do to run the university. Thank you
again for everything.
BUSINESS ETIQUETTE
Ms. Rollins is available to present workshops and can be contacted through her
website at www.rollinsrules.com.
A huge thank you to Linda
for her insights and advise.
Pony
Protocol
Ending a Conversation
Gracefully
I have stressed the importance of working a room when you are “invited/required”
to attend a corporate social event. On certain occasions, your charge is to meet
and greet as many guests as possible on behalf of your organization.
That
sounds simple enough until you are engaged in a conversation that seems to
continue too long. You really need to mingle with other guests. Without a
universal timer to signal a change of partners, you have to prepare and rehearse
your dialog to graciously remove yourself. Don’t forget the all-important
rehearsal, preferably aloud while you are in the midst of “mirror time”.
The
first rule of etiquette is always: “Do no harm.” Your body language and eye
contact is critical. You must not appear anxious to break away. You must appear
to regret that the conversation is ending. Find the opening for being able to
create a version of the following:
“I
certainly have enjoyed speaking with you/meeting you, and I would like to
continue this conversation; however, my duties this evening include greeting as
many of our guests as possible, and I must move on.”
This would be a good time to ask for a business card and make arrangements to
speak again in the future. (There is never an occasion for the “Let’s do lunch”
phoniness.)
“It’s been a pleasure meeting you. I look forward to seeing you again.”
(Rehearse aloud many different ways until the right inflection takes shape.)
Smile. Good corporate handshake. Take your leave.
Here’s THE BIG DON’T! Don’t abandon your guest to fend alone in the
crowd. Offer to make an introduction to one of your colleagues: “Let me
introduce you Ms. X.”
Escort your guest to the next person or group. Make the introductions. Get the
conversation started and take your leave. “Please excuse me.”
Preparation and practice is all it takes to meet and greet gracefully.
Remember. you can’t play the game if you don’t know the rules.
Monica Gomez Ortiz - I just wanted to personally thank you
and your "team" for getting the snacks for the office. I think you are
really in your element with all the "details" that went into preparing
everything so neatly. I know that I can say for the Records team and
myself that it was a welcome and much need help during the past two week
[preparing Diplomas and for Commencement]. It was nice touch and I really
appreciate it.
by Linda Tyler Rollins
Student Address Initiative
Starting with the fall 2006 undergraduate students are required to provide emergency contact information to the University. The need for this was highlighted with the experiences of other Universities last year during Hurricane season. To support this effort and to insure that address information stored in ACCESS.SMU is current the Registrar’s Office has begun a comprehensive initiative to notify students of the requirement to provide and update home, mailing, and emergency contact information.
Any students who have not updated/verified their address, phone numbers, emergency contact, and demographic summary by the 6th day of class of the fall term will receive an e-mail notifying them of the requirement and asking that the student verify and update their contact information. The student can update this information through their Personal Portfolio in ACCESS.SMU. Students who have not completed the verification process will have a HOLD placed on their ACCESS.SMU account restricting their ability to enroll for the spring term. Once the information is viewed by the student, the HOLD will automatically be removed.
In order to facilitate this process and avoid students having their enrollment restricted the Registrar’s Office has sent e-mails to all undergraduate students before the fall enrollment period to notify them of the new requirements. Subsequent to that another e-mail has been sent to students who have not completed the process.
At the end of August a postcards will be sent to the mailing address of all enrolled students reminding them of the new process to update/verify Personal Portfolio, an ad will be placed in the Daily Campus and flyers will be distributed at various locations around campus at the opening of the fall term 2006.
If you are assisting a student, please remind them of the important process for updating/verifying his Personal Portfolio.
Important Dates Aug 1 - Last July AARO session Aug 2 - Transfer AARO Aug 3 - First Payment Due Date Fall 06 Aug 11-13 - Mustang Corral Aug 13 - Official Opening Residence Halls Aug 13-16 - Week of Welcome Aug 16 - Opening Convocation Aug 17 - First Day of Classes Aug 23 - Last Day to Enroll Sept 4 -
Sept 15-17 -
Family Weekend Oct 9-10 -
Fall Break
Quotation of the Month To me
success means effectiveness in the world, that I am able to carry my ideas and
values into the world -- that I am able to change it in positive ways.
SMU Trivia
Question
Answer
The academic mace is first known from the 14th
century. It combines features of the scepter of royalty and the battle club
of the middle ages. The battle mace as a symbol is descended from the club
of Hercules, who was the defender of the suppressed in Roman times. In the
middle ages, battle clubs had an enlarged head, sometimes covered with knobs
or spikes. The scepter stands for lawful power and regal authority. A
scepter was carried by Zeus, chief among the Olympian Gods and God of moral
law and order. Academic maces vary in many ways. For example, the maces
of Yale, Duke, UC Berkeley, and Princeton are topped, respectively, by a
mythical animal, a crown of laurel leaves, a bear, and an eagle. Despite
variation, there is a general shape that most academic maces take. At the
top is an ornament placed on a bulbous head; ring-shaped enlargements are
found on the shaft; and the base is a round, foliated ornament. You can see SMU's Mace as a prominent feature in Opening
Convocation. It will be carried by the Faculty Senate President Rhonda
Blair.
Monday Morning
Leadership
For the next several months
the DES newsletter will contain leadership ideas developed in the book
Monday Morning Leadership by David Cottrell. The book uses stories to
illustrate leadership concepts. Although the book is designed to assist
those in management positions improve and develop leadership skills, the
concepts illustrated should be broadly interpreted and can be used by
everyone. Please take time to consider how the ideas presented could be
beneficial to you.
Thank you, Greg Pulte for preparing these each month.
The Sixth Monday
The Sixth Monday deals with
the issue of time management. For many people, time seems to be consumed by
things outside ones’ control. Your time is yours and it is your
responsibility. If you are not able to do the important things, only you can
solve that problem.
One of the major sources of
stress, anxiety, and unhappiness comes from the feeling that your life is out
of control. You need to figure out ways to take control of your time so that
you can take control of your life. Of course, there are some things we
cannot change. We have to wait in lines, at
red lights, and for elevators. There is not much we can do
about those things. There is a lot we can do about situations at work. If
you want to make better use of your time, you need to be looking for the
small increments of time, a minute here, five minutes there. Add them
together and you will create more time for you to use.
A job seldom overworks the
person but people often overwork themselves by making bad time management
decisions. Ultimately you will not solve your time problems by working
harder. What we need to do is to
find ways to shorten tasks, eliminate some steps, combine some tasks, and
work easier while getting things done.
A common myth is -- No one can save time, we all have the same
amount, and we cannot carry any time over to the next day. So we have to make better decisions on how we spend our time.
Two ways to spend time more
efficiently are to do less or to get things done faster. To work faster you
first need to figure out where your time is going. If you want to make
improvements, you’ve got to know what to improve. One idea is to track your
time for two weeks so you can make some decisions about what to improve.
Prioritizing and
Organizing:
Every time management guru
will tell you to touch paper only once. The key to paper management
is to keep the paper moving: throw it away, act upon it, or put it into your
reading pile – shuffling and reshuffling paper from pile to pile with no
evaluation or action is wasting your time.
Set aside some uninterrupted planning time every day.
Spending 20 uninterrupted minutes planning will yield the same result as 60
interrupted minutes. If you cannot set aside 20 minutes set aside 10. This
is still a great return on your investment.
Control your email deliveries. Do not go to your mailbox every 30 minutes. Work your emails
into your personal schedule so that emails do not monopolize your time. Make
an effort to only answer emails twice daily.
Batch Activities: do like activities together, so you are not starting and
stopping all the time. Answer all of you voice mails at one time and return
all phone calls at one time. Eliminate as many transitions from one activity
to another as possible.
Control your interruptions. Keep track of who is interrupting you and why they are
interrupting you. Then you can make some informed decisions about how you
are going to address the problem. If you cannot eliminate the
interruption, keep it short. Generally the length of the interruption is in
direct proportion to the comfort level of the interrupter. Don’t let the
interrupter get comfortable in your office and if someone comes into your
office stand up. You can handle business more quickly if you stand up than
if you are seated.
Arrange your desk so that it does not face the flow of traffic.
If you are looking at every person who comes down the hallway you are
wasting time.
Finally, and a potentially
very big time drain, are meetings. Meetings can be a valuable tool if everyone is prepared, on time, and
focused. Thus most meetings can be accomplished in half the time.
Efficient meetings can save the average person 150 hours. Make
your meetings productive but short.
Make sure your regular meeting have a purpose and that the purpose dictates
the frequency of the meetings. Short, well planned regular meetings
can eliminate e-mails and clarify projects and keep everyone moving ahead
toward a common goal.
Always begin a meeting by covering the most important items first.
That way you cover what you need to accomplish and your not rushing through
the main things.
When people show up late, do not recap what you have covered.
When you recap you reward the tardy person and punish the people who were on
time.
The simplest tip in meeting
management is to start and end your meetings on time. It’s
disrespectful and a bad investment to start a meeting later than scheduled.
You waste 30 minutes of productivity by beginning a meeting with 10 people
three minutes late.
August Division Meeting Rescheduled
more details later
Maxine Hong Kingston
An Italian economist named
Alfredo Pareto defined the Pareto Principle in the 1800s when he observed
that 20% of the people in Italy controlled 80% of the country’s wealth. He
realized that his observation applied to many things – time management
included. It is your responsibility to yourself and your team to know where
your highest payoff activities are and eliminate as many as you can of the
ones that yield few results.