Blog: Advice

I’d start off by understanding what the pain-points are and what the most tedious tasks are currently being done by Baruch staff, faculty and students and then focus on how to automate those processes using various forms of new media.

I went ahead and interviewed some students, faculty and staff, briefly and found that specific situations at the registrar and bursar can and should be automated. For example, when/if a student needs help with scheduling issues, often times they are very similar from student to student. Usually a student want’s to drop a class or they want to confirm that they are taking the right classes in order to graduate but aren’t sure how to go about doing so and if/when he/she tries to Google around or visit the CUNYfirst portal, they can’t find the proper and most direct solution. This causes lines to get really long at various offices, and staff to be filled up to max capacity bleeding CUNYs money dry. Maybe this type of issue is why CUNY professors aren’t getting paid the amount that they should… 

In addition, I’ve also personally noticed that there are various types of documentation provided by different people from Baruch, from different CUNY schools, etc for the same exact issue, causing even more confusion and frustration across the board. 

If only there was one centralized, local repository for FAQs, and common questions that CUNY students, faculty, and professors could use to understand all of their issues whether it be a registrar, bursar, etc issue … 

If I was a Baruch employee, I’d solve this issue by creating a CUNY-wide artificial intelligence chat-bot that taps into students/faculty/professors EMPL ID’s to understand all of their academic histories and could automatically provide them suggestions based on what classes they need to teach/take, what credits they need to fulfill and even being able to tell the bot to schedule my classes for me. Though it’s a risky opportunity and requires some up-front intelligence and capital, it could be extremely rewarding in regards to time, long-term savings and could ultimately free up operating costs in 5-10 years and that cash flow could be used on other focuses like more professors, affordable textbooks, and/or better facilities for students, etc.