On October 19, 2017, the new Continuous Improvement (CI) unit within the Office of Student Access, Success, & Diversity Initiatives (SASDI) hosted a morning seminar on continuous improvement and change management. In addition to colleagues from SASDI (including Career Services and the Global Leaders Program), we were happy to welcome colleagues from Facilities, Human Resources, Institutional Advancement, Office of Technology Services, and Stuart School of Business.
“Your workshop design was great and successful on multiple levels. You delivered value, you requested feedback from us and you modeled the process you hope to implement. Great work!”
-Ana Rossetti, Assistant Dean, Stuart School of Business
It was important to us that the seminar be interactive and that it would be applicable to the work of the attendees. We started with a session on how to identify specific aspects of a process that can be rapidly implemented to have a significant impact on the process, using a case study to apply what was learned in the session. We are grateful to the Office of Continuous Improvement at the University of Notre Dame for sharing this quick-wins-focused “Move-It!” session with us. The second continuous improvement activity that we did was about a goal-oriented change framework developed by the change management research group called Prosci. We evaluated the change process, analyzed how to help others traverse it, and applied our own real life change challenges to the framework.
→ 100% of participants felt the seminar was interactive
→ 94% agree that they can apply what they learned to their work
→ 129% increase in their awareness of some basic continuous improvement methodologies
(from 41% pre-seminar to 94% post-seminar)
The third part of the workshop was focused on the work of SASDI’s new Continuous Improvement unit. In order for our colleagues to provide us with feedback, we provided them with context by sharing our plans (outlined in our CI Initial Findings Report) and what great work other universities are doing in the arenas of continuous improvement and organizational excellence. They used their personal experience, their knowledge of Illinois Tech, and their new knowledge about other universities to provide us with advice that we truly value.
We will be hosting this seminar again in November 2017 to share a few continuous improvement methodologies, present on our new CI work, and receive feedback from colleagues. If you are interested in participating, please contact Megan Mozina (mmozina@iit.edu) and/or Molly McCaughey (mmccaugh@iit.edu).
About the authors:
Megan E. Mozina is the Director of Strategic Alignment in the Office of Student Access, Success, & Diversity Initiatives at Illinois Tech. Within SASDI, she is responsible for strategic planning, targeted projects, and integration of continuous improvement methodologies. Her change management certification, interest in Lean, Masters in international higher education, and background in intercultural training, combined with over a decade of experience in international/higher education, inform her work.
Molly McCaughey is a project manager and communications specialist in the Office of Student Access, Success, & Diversity Initiatives at Illinois Tech. She oversees a student team that implements marketing and communications strategies for the SASDI division, and also works on development and integration of continuous improvement methodologies. She has a background in English and ESL teaching and training, and is a Prosci Certified Change Management Practitioner.