Scoring While Time Expires

I’m not sure where I misplaced my summer, but between all the hiring we did (inevitable for a staff where many assistant deans are young alumni doing a service for their alma mater before heading off to graduate school), all the visitors we received on campus and all the preparations we made for the 2008-2009 academic year, there wasn’t much time that anyone would call a break.  Next week our fall travel season begins, and from then through November, we’ll have as many staff on the road as we have in the office on any given day.  A whirlwind of activity meets a revolving door of a workplace.

Nonetheless, I’m extremely pleased with several concrete things our office accomplished this summer.  Even with the last days of August ticking away, we achieved several important goals.  Most, such as the assurance of a smooth data import from the Common Application, a new component to the way annual reviews work for staff, retraining on a research instrument for prospect data from the College Board, and a scheme that makes sense for the staff’s individual and regional assignments, aren’t particularly noticeable to applicants or visitors.

Two projects from this summer, however, may make more direct impressions, and both have to do with multimedia content for the web.  As already evidenced by my level of involvement with the re.web project and our staff’s eagerness to take advantage of the new capabilities it gives us, we intend to engage our audiences online much more in the coming year.  Coming soon to the site will be a slideshow with audio segments from student conversations led by our own Assistant Dean Randy Tripp.  Also coming soon is the project I’ve referred to in an earlier blog post as the YouEssay, and I’m particularly excited about how the final cut of it is turning out.  More on that soon.

– Henry Broaddus