ACTION PLAN
(Revised)
ADMPS CORE 3003
Fall 1998
Daniel P. Kennedy

________________________________________________________________________

Introduction

    As an introduction to the Action Plan that follows I take a few paragraphs to provide some information about my background and experiences and how I began to consider doctoral studies. Rather than simple listing my educational and professional background, I felt it would be more enlightening (and entertaining) to provide this information in this manner to provide a more historical flow.

How did I get here? (My educational and professional journey thus far)

    One of the most interesting things about people are the choices that they make and how those choices affect what they ultimately become or desire to become. In 1975, after graduating from high school, studying in a doctoral program was the last thing on my mind. Quite honestly at that time I really had no intention of really even attending college. In the Pittsburgh area, the steel mills were still the linchpin of the local economy and with most of my friends going to the mills, it seemed that college would be nothing more than a four-year delay in my getting into the local mill work force. With some gentle persuasion from family I enrolled at the Community College of Allegheny College (CCAC). While I was initially skeptical about college, what I received from CCAC was an Associate of Arts degree in Liberal Arts and a desire to transfer to a four-year college to continue my education. I transferred to the Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) as an education major, with a specialty in Business Education, specifically Marketing and Business Machines. After graduating with a Bachelor of Science, I taught for a short time as a substitute teacher in the Penn Hills School District and was offered a long-term substitute position at Penn Hills High School. I had hoped that this would become a permanent position (the previous teacher had originally indicated that she would not be returning from a maternity leave), however, this experience ended with the return of the regular teacher from leave.

    In the early 1980’s, the market in the Pittsburgh area for my specialty was nonexistent so I started looking for positions outside of education. I didn't see myself as an office worker and I wanted a job that would give me a chance to put into practice what I learned about management and business. I obtained a position with Ashland Petroleum in their SuperAmerica Marketing Division as a manager of a store. I gained a great deal of practical experience in management, budgeting and people skills, but after three years I decided that this was not what I wanted to do as a career. All throughout high school and college and while I worked for Ashland, I played in a succession of bands. In college, I was performing in area nightclubs several times a week. When I left Ashland, I was in a band that was working regularly in and around the Pittsburgh area so I decided to keep playing while I sorted out what I really wanted to do.

    One of my roommates at IUP who was working at a college in New York suggested that I might be interested in the Student Personnel Services in Higher Education program at IUP. After visiting and speaking with the professors I enrolled in the program. What appealed to me was the unusual combination of skills required to be successful in student affairs. Due to my business background, I was steered toward the area of financial aid and I was able to obtain an assistantship. I completed the program (receiving a Master of Arts) and worked at IUP for several months prior to obtaining a position at Carnegie Mellon. I worked directly in financial aid at Carnegie Mellon for 9 years, moving from a counselor position to ultimately becoming the Associate Director. During this time I was responsible for management of staff within the office, as well as being heavily involved in the computerization of the office and in office process improvement projects.

After a major reorganization in the Enrollment Division at Carnegie Mellon, I was offered my current position of Associate Director of Enrollment Systems. My current responsibilities are directly related to process reengineering and improvement by utilization of computer automation to provide more accurate and timely delivery of services to students. I was deeply involved with the creation and implementation of Carnegie Mellon’s current Financial Aid System, which automates virtually all steps involved in providing students with aid awards (Need Analysis, Packaging) and ultimately getting the funds disbursed to student accounts. I have developed several important programs currently running on the Carnegie Mellon Student Information System (SIS). These programs include the Early Financial Aid Estimate Program (for high school seniors), the Stafford and Plus Loan certification programs, the current World Wide Web Undergraduate Admission's Application (which feeds directly into the campus database on submission), a web based Admissions Inquiry Application process and currently the development of a new university Commencement System. I also have an extensive background in creating automated programs in Microsoft Excel. In addition, I have taken courses and have extensive experience in several different databases (Panorama, Filemaker, Ingres and Oracle), C++ programming, shell scripting for Unix and have provided over the years quite a bit of computer support for both Windows as well as Macintosh systems and applications. All of which leads up to the creation of a fairly technologically rounded individual, who took advantage of the opportunities that were available. I’d like to note that none of these areas where presented as ‘tool’s of the trade’ in my educational background nor do I have a systems background.

What is My Current Area of Interest?

    After being involved in the implementation of three systems at Carnegie Mellon and seeing the impact of these changes, I began to think about the impact on staff. I still use my counseling training quite a bit these days, the problem is it’s not with students, it’s with staff. I am interested in the application of technology to student services and the problems and effects that application creates. As I have developed programs that automate processes, I often wonder about the long-term cost for the short-term gain. It appears to me that a number of initiatives by colleges using the internet for education are not taking into consideration the human interaction that in part makes the college experience so unique. Many appear to simply be made so that a school has a presence or appears to be doing ‘internet friendly’. I am obviously concerned with improving processes, but at the same time, underlying support systems should not be endangered. What are the techniques that allow a successful implementation for students as well as the college? What happens to the human interaction process?

    When experienced staff leave the institution what are the background qualifications for new hires? As the field changes what changes are needed in the basic skills of staff? What are the implications of these technologies as we move towards the ‘Global Village’? With the increasing use of the technology to provide instruction and ancillary services, many student development issues student affairs professionals have thought were important elements of the post secondary experience may be lost or at best are not being addressed.

What are my Desired Outcomes from the Core Experience? How can these assist in my continuing studies?

    I hope to continue to improve how I identify issues and focus my thoughts. Core has already begun to assist me in this process. I really think that interactions with others can sharpen your current view of the world and provide data to continually check the validity of what you believe. Rather than focusing on why I think something is true, I hope that it helps me to be better able to grasp other possibilities and my ability to analyze accept or reject them. I also find it comforting that others are dealing with the same kind of issues and I have an opportunity to share ideas and concerns. Being a believer in self actualization, I find that the group process to learning places much more responsibility on me. I hope to be much better at being able to ask questions. I hope to be less afraid of not knowing the ‘right’ answer and more confidant of utilizing and expanding my own skill at identifying, analyzing and selecting the possibilities. I’m looking forward to continuing my ‘Journey’!

My Action Plan

Specifically this plan will serve as the ‘road map’ that I will use for charting my experience and detailing my expected outcomes (outlined above), and the activities I will use to achieve those outcomes. As a ‘road map’ it will continue to be developed over time as I ‘travel’ and identify other ‘stops’ that I feel are important to my experience both individually and with my study group. The essential elements, as expressed in the course syllabus are related to:

    1. Development of skills central to critical thinking. These include reading, writing and thinking of issues from multiple perspectives.
    2. Becoming more actively ‘involved’ in issues of importance to my specific area of interest and to the field of education. This obviously includes discovering, developing and refining the methods used to identify issues as a critical element of involvement. A different or meaningful understanding of an issue will allow for a meaningful contribution.
    3. Becoming adept in the use of current, and the identification of new, uses of computer technology as important tools for communications and research as a citizen-practitioner and scholar.
The three areas described above are each elements in both the individual and the group activities which follow.
 

Individual Projects

Group Project

Our group name is the Collaborators and for our project we are undertaking a review of a
document produced by the UNESCO Task Force on Education in the 21st Century titled:
 


LEARNING: The Treasure Within:


 


Our particular interest in this report arose from our discussions as a group on areas we all believe to be important to the general public, the global community and ourselves. As we pursue our studies, and in particular the impact of the readings in this course, we find that issues of 'community' taken for granted herein the United States, have taken on a more global aspect. The reality of the 'global community' will continue to be an extremely important issue in the years to come as we face challenges with ensuring in our efforts that we work towards inclusion. Our initial group discussions centered around brainstorming to do some type of activity and we came up with the following list:

As we had time to think about these options singly, it became apparent that perhaps we could find a vehicle that would enable us to pursue these options in tandem. The selection of this report provides us with the opportunity to touch each of the above (with the exception of the movie). In addition, we will also be able to better tune our personal understandings on the use of power in the formulation and implementation of policy, inter-personal relations, and communications.

The first step was a review of the hilights of the report of the Commission. Copies of this document were available on the World Wide Web and were distributed to the members (the address is listed above). In addition, follow-up materials were identified from a conference held in Melbourne Austrialia earlier this year. Members of the group were requested to review the hilights and to provide initial written 'think pieces' which will be reviewed among the members (with suggestions being made). This was done due to the delay in receipt of the actual copy of the full-text report of the Commission. To facilitate copying to group members, permission for copying for non-commercial use has been received from the Director of the Commission (a copy of that message is included in our 'artifacts' and will be included in our folders).

Last, at least related to this introduction, is the reason for the creation of this web page. There were several reasons we opted for this type of presentation. First, with the apparent demise of NiceNet, our ability to trade information had become severely compromised. Second, with this type of presentation, only one original needs to be maintained, all group members can access updates as they occur, wherever they happen to be located. This is an important issue as we are dealing, at this point, with written documents, which in case they are misplaced, would cause at least a week's delay before a new copy could be obtained. We are also achieving another outcome of the class in utilizing technology in our communications between ourselves.

Next Steps in the Process (now that I know what I think I know)

I am currently leaving this section open to allow me to add information on lessons learned and to remind me that the journey continues.