12th Man Graduates

The Technology Services - Student Affairs applications team including graduating students holding signed 12th Man towels

They have been the 12th Man, but now they are leaving. Others are already stepping up to stand ready in their place. This month we celebrate our eight student employees who are graduating. We wish we could keep them all, but alas!

In a few months, Texas A&M will celebrate the 100th anniversary of a great Aggie tradition. On January 2, 1922, as Aggies found themselves running low on resources they needed to be successful, a student stepped up to join the team and put on the uniform. Though he was not seen in the center of attention, the team was encouraged and together they pulled off an incredible upset to win. Back then, the student was E. King Gill, and the challenge was that injuries kept taking players out of a football game against the top-ranked team in the nation. Gill’s willingness to step up was the start of the Aggie’s 12th Man tradition.

Now, nearly 100 years later, each of our graduating student employees has been the 12th Man. Our team was running low on resources necessary to be successful. When each of these students joined our team and put on the uniform (a Technology Services – Student Affairs shirt), their willingness and contribution was not always the center of attention, but it has indeed been critical to our success in serving our customers.

The impact they have made on the Division of Student Affairs and the students of Texas A&M is significant. Here are some examples:

A year ago, because of the pandemic, Texas A&M cancelled The Big Event, which typically offered more than 20,000 students a one-day opportunity to serve the local community. This year, student leaders hoped to resume the day of service but needed a way to do so safely. Mohit Maan, a member of our applications team, made the significant changes to the Big Event Online tool, which allowed community members to submit virtual job opportunities and allowed students to volunteer for an in-person or virtual job. He made a corresponding change to the algorithm that matches students to jobs and adjusted the tool to support a different process for recording job details that no longer required students to manage paper forms. These and related software enhancements made it possible for more than 10,000 students to once again say, “Thank you,” by safely serving the community.
Residence Life uses a vendor product to manage more than 10,000 on-campus housing assignments, but the team needed a better way to communicate with many or all of their tenants via text message. A different vendor product excelled as a messaging service, but the two vendor products could not talk with each other. Paramdeep Singh, a member of our applications team, developed code that would automatically pull the relevant data from one system, transform it, and then convey it to the other system using application programming interfaces (APIs) offered by each vendor. Following his graduation, Paramdeep will go to work for Facebook, having interned there previously while working on its API services.

Technology Services – Student Affairs can tell similar stories of our other graduates who quietly provide value to hundreds, if not thousands, of students and staff.

This value for our customers is the result of service enhancements Technology Services – Student Affairs may not have been able to provide in a timely manner without the talented contribution of student employees. The work of a few has benefited thousands, and the benefits they gain from working with a team of professionals that entrusts them with such opportunities has enhanced their skills for the future. These student employees also have the opportunity to train their successors, so this great work will continue.

To each of our 12th Man graduates who will receive a diploma this month, congratulations and thank you!

Applications Team