UTNBA streamlined processes for procedures in Technical degree programs

UTNBA’s Culture and University Extension Office introduced a series of modifications in the administrative procedures corresponding to the Technical degree programs, which made them more efficient and reduced the time to complete them, within the framework of the Quality policy carried out by the School.

Eng. Christian Grillo, Secretary of Culture and University Extension (SCEU), explained that when he took office as Secretary, he made an analysis of the processes involved in the administration of short programs (technical and bachelor degrees). It was then detected that the administrative procedures for each student were carried out manually, so “for each technical degree program that was created, it was necessary to hire one or more employees to carry out the required procedures. For this reason, I proposed to work through processes, to avoid having only a single person who knew each particular process,” he explained.

In this regard, the Secretary recalled that they began to detect “errors in the management of minutes and procedures, which had to be subsequently fixed through validation processes discussed by the Councils. In addition, we had difficulty in analyzing the problem since there were no indicators. For example, when a person finished their degree program, it took 6 months before they could start the process to obtain their diploma due to the average time it took to put their paperwork in order. With the modifications introduced, the student can currently start the process to obtain their diploma only 30 days after having taken their final exam,” he said.

To obtain this result, the Secretary carried out a digitizalition of the processes executed by the non-faculty staff. He also stressed that in the area of academic administration “they made their best. In the course of this transformation, we realized that there were tools that the non-faculty staff would have to learn to use and that is why we provided special trained for them.”

In this sense, part of the workers did not know how to use certain technological tools, so “we had to train them in tools of that type. At present, the same employees who previously did paperwork, now do it within the framework of a technological system. They were trained for that purpose, so they could use IT tools such as SIGA or ticket managers that are used in other sectors of the School,” said Grillo.

The Secretary of Culture and University Extension also stressed that before, “since the procedures were done by the person assigned to each Technical degree program, the office receiving students’ requests was open only during that employee’s working hours. Currently, the students’ service sector is open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and is intended to resolve queries and procedures for all the degree programs offered. We quickly noticed that this change generated a very high student loyalty and an attention-to-the-public service that we did not have before. To make this possible, we had excellent collaboration from the Academic Management Office, which is headed by Engineer Vanina Bottini.”

The changes implemented by the Office made it possible to reduce the time to begin the process of obtaining diplomas to 30 days, and to respond to the queries received within a maximum period of 48 hours.