This past spring, the University awarded Green Belt certifications to 11 individuals who participated in the Green Belt program offered by the Office of Continuous Improvement. Each certification indicates significant achievement of process improvement results with an impact that’s felt across campus.
Project leader Jennifer Pittman, assistant director of outreach engagement recruiting, became Green Belt-certified for her work on improving the enrollment of Notre Dame’s TRiO Talent Search students in the 21st Century Scholars program, a state-sponsored program to provide in-state tuition for eligible students.
While this project may have seemed to be out of the normal Green Belt project realm, the educational and economic impact will be felt for years to come. The Green Belt process revealed that the cause of low enrollment was a lack of awareness about the program in the community. New processes are in place to better promote the program.
Pittman’s favorite part of the project is “seeing the progress and results of the project and how it is impacting the lives of our students.”
• Kevin Birch, Office of Human Resources, and Bill McKinney, Controller’s Office: implemented an automated entry and routing system for the payment request process, automatically providing requesters with the correct form, proper FOAPAL validation tracking of requests and review for verification by requesters and approvers.
• Dan Brewer, Procurement Services, and Augie Freda, Office of Information Technologies: implemented an enabling technologies process to ensure IT initiatives on campus are thoroughly assessed to eliminate unnecessary redundancy and minimize problems in execution.
• Kimberly Kennedy, Office of General Counsel, and James Smith, Office of Information Technologies: decreased time to collect and pull appropriate and relevant data and decreased the burden placed on University faculty and staff.
• Jennifer Pittman, Outreach and Engagement Recruitment (formerly of TRiO Talent Search): increased the percentage of eligible Talent Search students enrolled in the 21st Century Scholars program from 10 percent to 53 percent, providing the means for an additional 69 South Bend Community School Corp. students to attend college.
• Dan Skendzel, Notre Dame Studios: utilized a process design approach to create efficient workflows prior to the launch of ND Studios. The workflows were designed using customer feedback, which provided the basis of training for the newly operating studios.
• Gwen Stayback and Brian
Wesolowski, Freimann Animal Care Facility: reduced the percentage of supplies purchased via procard by 35 percent, eliminating an overstock of duplicate ordered items.
• Javi Aitor Zubizarreta, Office of Mission Engagement: implemented an effective asset management process with the newly launched Grotto Network to ensure 100 percent of assets are logged, tagged and easily searchable for future use.
Pictured in front row, left to right, are Javi Zubizarreta, Jennifer Pittman, Brian Wesolowski, Dan Brewer, and Augie Freda. Pictured in back row, left to right are Kevin Birch, Kimberly Kennedy, James Smith, Bill McKinney, Dan Skendzel, and Gwen Stayback.
Originally published by at news.nd.edu on August 24, 2018.