Enrollment Division Kudos Awards

Following the first inaugural Staff-Speak survey about two years ago, the enrollment division started a new initiative called “TROTT” which stands for Teamwork, Recognition, Opportunity, Transparency, and Training. This is the acronym that the enrollment team developed as a code word to remind us of our collective commitment to create a collaborative, engaging, supportive and fulfilling work environment.

Over time we have been taking on the different letters in TROTT. For the past several months we have been focusing hard on the letter R to recognize and celebrate our accomplishments and to help us understand each other better. As part of this effort, we recently began the enrollment division “Kudos Awards” program soon after the second staff-speak survey results became available.

Using the standard “Chatter” feature of the Salesforce platform, staff members can post on the “Enrollment Kudos Wall” to thank fellow staff members for going above and beyond their job descriptions and to help the team understand and gain awareness for what everyone on the team does. This helps builds respect, appreciation, transparency, and teamwork.

Our first “Kudos Awards Ceremony” was held on May 24, 2017 as part of an all-staff meeting. The three top Kudos award winners were Jody Buck (assistant director of undergraduate admissions) Fuad Hadzovic (enrollment software engineer), and Leticia Moreno (senior financial aid counselor and student liaison).

As a part of Illinois Tech’s Industrial Organization Master’s Program offered by the Department of Psychology, Buck used one of her internships to design an evaluation of the undergraduate admissions employee training and on-boarding process. Her work allowed us to identify gaps in knowledge and areas for improvement surrounding staff training. She has now begun working on implementing training rubrics, objectives, and more effective means of delivering training for both seasoned team members and new hires.

Moreno continues to serve the Office of Financial Aid in a high capacity across her workload. This spring she developed a policy for the office to enhance compliance and student services with FERPA and for students facing hardship situations or homelessness.  She also served as a student advocate through advising the USA student organization, giving financial literacy presentations, and partnering with the One Stop.

Hadzovic’s forward-thinking technical abilities have allowed the Enrollment Process Intelligence (EPI) team to create convenient and applicable ways to deliver data to students. In the last few months, Hadzovic has been instrumental in our data integration project (Axiom) with the Office of Technology Services. When completed, Hadzovic’s work will allow for efficient and correct data transfers between Banner and our admission systems, saving dozens of hours every month currently spent resolving data integration issues. It will also provide a framework for the convenient integration of other auxiliary systems across campus with Banner.