Judy Duffy, Group Manager Academic Services and Merilyn Harris, Faculty Manager with the team members of the In2Monash team: Colin Rich, Norm Wall and Kate Breen.

BusEco staff receive Vice-Chancellor's Award for Excellence

The outstanding contribution, of our professional staff to the Faculty and the broader University has been acknowledged and rewarded by the Vice-Chancellor this week. This is the first time that members of the faculty have won a VC Award for Exceptional Performance by General Staff.  These Awards are the University’s highest form of acknowledgement and reward for an outstanding contribution to the University by general staff.

Congratulations to Norm Wall, Colin Rich, Kate Breen, Carol Nahal and Elaine Smart, the core team members of the In2Monash project.

Congratulations also to Melissa Dibben who received a Commendation for her role as project manager of the KRONOS team.

“The innovation, creativity, problem solving, tenacity and team work that underpinned this software development are the result of the collective genius and goodwill of the members of the In2Monash project team,” says Merilyn Harris, Faculty Manager.

In2Monash is a unique software system that was built to meet the specific business needs of the Faculty of Business and Economics in processing over 6,000 applications from prospective students received each semester.  The efficient processing of these applications resulted in 2,584 commencing international students in 2007 raising revenue of over $57m per year.  No other faculty has to manage this scale of operations and no other systems or processes in existence in the University addressed these business imperatives for the faculty.  The cost of the development of the software was also strongly supported by the Advancement Division.

With respect to the KRONOS Project Merilyn Harris said, “It is necessary to acknowledge the striking professionalism of the individuals concerned and their ability to work together in a truly cross disciplinary team.  Each member contributed a high level of expertise, outstanding analysis and problem solving skills and a commitment that was inspirational and hugely reassuring to those of us who are the end users of the software”. 

The KRONOS project concept was originally funded for commencement in 2005 as a result of unanimous support from all ten faculties.  The project has a dual focus.  It provides a planning tool, with the facility to allow managers to modify key data parameters (eg retention rates), set targets for various market segments and student types, test intake scenarios, project load up to five years ahead, store plans and access a variety of detailed and summary reports.  None of this functionality existed previously.

KRONOS is now being further developed to provide a management tool that extends the load monitoring facility to the admissions process with access to VTAC, direct entry and international student admissions data from the point of application through to offers, acceptances, enrolments and load.

The 2007 VC Awards were announced at a ceremony at Clayton campus on Friday 30 November.