Texas A&M offers excellent educational opportunities to its students. As an example, the undergraduate program in Texas A&M’s Department of Management is ranked #7 nationally by U.S. News & World Report in 2022. However, the opportunities to develop management skills go far beyond the classroom. Often Student Affairs IT gets to be a part of supporting this other education.
Mac McGee knows this. He is a senior business management student specializing in entrepreneurial leadership. He has taken all the courses required for his program. However, he has also discovered how to go beyond the textbooks and lectures to get an education with even bigger learning impact.
For the past three years Mac has held different leadership positions in a recognized student organization. The Big Event organization plans and executes the largest student-run one-day service project in the United States. He started as a staff assistant preparing for the 2020 Big Event that was ultimately cancelled. He went on to be a committee member for donor relations before joining the executive committee to lead recruiting for this year’s Big Event.
With his staff partner, Mac led ten committee members. Under them were another 50 staff members who worked together throughout the year. That’s a lot of management responsibility that isn’t possible in a classroom.
Information Loss
Despite having nearly 400 members in its 40th year, The Big Event had a big problem. The event was last held on campus three years ago. Only seniors had seen the critical business processes for group check in and tool distribution on the big day. There was a substantial loss of organizational knowledge. This loss also offered an opportunity to re-envision what these processes could look like.
The Technology Services – Student Affairs applications team has been a strategic partner with The Big Event for more than a decade. The team maintains and enhances a custom web application to manage resident job requests, volunteer signups, matching jobs to volunteer groups, volunteer check in, and incident management on the big day. Fortunately, because of their close partnership, the Technology Services – Student Affairs team possessed a great deal of The Big Event’s missing organizational knowledge. Being onsite for check in and kickoff every year, the team even had timestamped photos from which the pre-pandemic layout and kickoff schedule could be reconstructed.
Information Transfer
In the past representatives of each volunteer group have been required to attend an in-person informational in Kyle Field’s Hall of Champions the week prior to the event. They had to sit and listen to instructions before picking up a packet containing details about their group’s assigned job. They were responsible for conveying that information to the rest of their group.
Mac McGee ’22
The Big Event leaders saw this process as their biggest challenge to improve. “It was a lot to organize, and it was difficult the get people to show up. It was hard to have accountability as to whether they actually showed up. And it was especially difficult while also finalizing so many other details for the event happening just days later,” said Mac.
The re-envisioned process eliminated the informational sessions. Thinkific, an online training delivery platform, replaced the in-person instruction. The platform tracks the progress of everyone who has a course assignment. Mac describes Thinkific as “a big game changer.” Technology Services – Student Affairs plans to integrate Thinkific with its Get Involved platform for even greater administrative efficiency for other organizations that have training requirements.
There was still the issue of getting job details to about 1,800 group leaders representing 13,200 volunteers. One option considered was to simply email job details to the leader. However, this approach would not address other process weaknesses. If a group leader got sick or otherwise did not fulfill their duty, an entire group of volunteers would not participate. Also, there were two required group tasks during kickoff on the big day that were very different. To avoid confusion, leaders wanted to align the group check in and tool distribution processes.
In the past, a printed page from the job packet was required to check a group in at the Kyle Field Plaza on the big day. The leader’s student ID was taken as collateral for tools that were later checked out to the group. A green dot was stuck on the job form to notify the tool distribution lines on west campus that prerequisite steps had been completed. The form contained a list of tools required.
Information Technology
In collaboration with DoIT, a new process was developed. Group leaders received a personalized email with a link to all pertinent details. By linking to an online page, details are kept up-to-date such as removing resident contact information if a job is cancelled. All members of the group received a similar email. The job information page included an identifying barcode. Each group’s representative or a delegate could simply show the barcode to get checked in. The details also included a link to a map for directions to the job site.
Mac greatly appreciated what Technology Services – Student Affairs enabled. “As a full time student and someone who is trying to figure out what I’m doing on the recruitment side, I’m not trained in a lot of what IT makes possible. IT streamlines the communication process. It’s like a small city, trying to communicate with so many students. IT enables an efficient process on the day of by sending an email with a barcode in advance to get them there.”
Each group was assigned to one of 30 tool distribution lines to pick up the tools needed for their job. Check in was rearranged to have students line up in the same way. As each group’s barcode was scanned, they received a pre-printed card with details needed for subsequent tool pickup. IDs were no longer collected. No more green dots had to be attached. The card layout improved proper tool distribution.
By 6:30 a.m. on the big day, Technology Services – Student Affairs had 30 laptops set up ready for check in. The scores of staff led by Mac and his partner were trained and began to direct students in lines, scan barcodes, find the right tool cards, and handle special cases that arose. Mac was pleased with the result. “So much of this past year was planning for one day. The one year of planning made the one day be a really cool experience to execute. It went really well! If I had to do it, it would never have worked. It’s great having an awesome IT team that’s so dedicated to working with The Big Event. They made sure we achieved our main goal of serving the community.”
Information Analysis
Technology Services – Student Affairs is committed to continuous improvement. Mac was intrigued that, “even 5 minutes after the close of check in, IT was asking how to improve for next year.”
Data collected during the process is critical for process improvement. As students become reacquainted with The Big Event, participation is expected to grow back to pre-pandemic levels. The data shows that with only a minor modification in the online tool provided by DoIT, the revised process can effectively handle more than 22,000 volunteers.
“This year was pivotal because students discovered what The Big Event was and what it could be. I’m incredibly excited for what it can and will be next year. IT will play a vital role in that, developing new technologies in order to grow our numbers and to help educate students on the importance of selfless service. The biggest thing for The Big Event is to provide a platform for students to live out their value of selfless service,” said Mac.
Mac says he learned a lot that day. “That’s one of the most valuable things of being involved on campus, especially with something like The Big Event. In my business classes, you’re reading about it, hearing about it, but so much of it is really about action. I can’t tell you how valuable those experiences were. They were more than any book could teach.”
There is no substitute for experience. Supplementing in-class instruction with quality real-world type experience is what distinguishes Aggieland from so many other institutions.
Mac will graduate this May. He will then begin his career with a great job opportunity at Ernst & Young, one of the Big Four accounting firms. Undoubtedly, given his big educational experience while a student, he will realize the underlying truth of the Aggie joke: “What do you call an Aggie five years after graduation? Boss.”
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For more information about the various campus IT groups that cooperated to make The Big Event a success this year, read the article, “A Big Service and a Big Success“
