Case Study: Strengthening student services through operational efficiency
By proactively addressing inefficiencies in our processes and workflows, universities reduce unnecessary burdens while building trust and meaningful connections among students, staff, and faculty.
Vaden Consulting supported a college within a large public university in strengthening the effectiveness of its mission-critical student services, beginning with an office responsible for field and internship placements with school division partners and for guiding students through complex institutional and state licensure requirements.
Challenge
In the months leading up to our review, the Office for Teacher Preparation experienced significant staff transitions, highlighting the need for greater process consistency, cross-training in key tasks, and clearer role definitions.
Rather than immediately backfilling the empty positions, the college’s leadership sought a proactive approach to thoroughly understand the challenges and gaps that existed across this office’s various processes and service touchpoints.
Objective
To strengthen the office’s operations and service delivery by assessing and redesigning its organizational structure, processes, and student touchpoints to be more effective, efficient, and student-centered.
Solution
Our work began with a comprehensive review of the office’s existing workflows and processes, including roles and responsibilities, workloads, documentation practices, and other service workflows. To better understand its various touchpoints, we also facilitated a mapping initiative to capture how the office and other partners within the college work to support licensure students throughout their student journey, from admission through graduation.
Engagement with stakeholders across the college was also critical to surfacing any operational challenges and ensuring our suggested improvements would be grounded in service realities. As a result, we built cross-unit connections to ensure every voice was heard.
Our recommendations included a new staffing model that better aligned its services with the students’ needs and experiences. This led to the creation of a new generalist role to provide student advising, support office operations as needed, and act as a flexible resource across the team. In addition, we created a prioritization of the operational processes that needed to be revised, streamlined, or formalized.
Results
Since adopting these organizational recommendations, the office has taken significant steps toward optimizing its operational efficiency and improving the quality of its service delivery, including:
Enhanced pre-advising support for students
Increased visibility and coordination across student and college touchpoints
Formalized standard operating procedures for mission-critical processes
Launched streamlined internship application and content area review processes
Cross-trained staff to develop shared knowledge and skill development
“Partnering with Vaden Consulting was transformative for our office. Through a thoughtful, collaborative approach we identified inefficiencies and reimagined processes that were critical to supporting our students through complex licensure requirements. By engaging stakeholders across the college, we have strengthened our ability to provide consistent, student-centered support. Today, our workflows are clearer, our advising is more proactive, and our team is better equipped to meet the needs of future educators.”