Susie Kennedy wants you to register at Lethbridge College. As the institution’s registrar, she will bring to bear all her skills in customer relations to ensure your trip through the portals of post-secondary education is a pleasant and efficient one. And, as a former program leader for the college’s Computer Information Technology program, she understands what has to happen on the frontlines and behind the scenes to create a seamless registration process.
“Customer service is what it’s about,” says Kennedy (Business Administration ’87 Honours), now well into her second year in the position. “We know students today are well-informed and they have choices; they can go anywhere they like to get their education, so we have to compete for them.”
That means ramping up service to meet customer expectations with a happy, well-trained staff providing convenience and ease for prospective students. If melding customer service and computer technology to create a user-friendly process sounds revolutionary, Kennedy herself is a “non-traditionalist” in the sense that she has broken a few moulds throughout her career.
“Moving from faculty to administration was a leap of faith for me,” says Kennedy, who took over her position in early 2009 after an innovative turn in the CIT program. “I loved my job and I hadn’t thought of applying; very few registrars come from the faculty side. But then I read the job description during a weekend and had my application in Monday.”
College leadership, including President Tracy Edwards, is pleased she did. “Because of her technology background, she absolutely understands effective systems and processes,” says Edwards.
“And, because she has been a faculty member, she appreciates the relationship between academia and the service side. Finally, and most importantly, she understands what students need and want.”
The sudden change was the jolt Kennedy needs every so often to keep her fresh and invigorated in her job. She came to the college after a successful career at the former Time Air, where she developed a training database and charted on-time performance. When CIT opened up at Lethbridge College, Kennedy was ready for a change.
“The program already had a techie, so I took on the softer side of it,” she says. The “softer side,” however, still required mental toughness. Each year, she led groups of four to five second-year students through a dozen live practicum projects, all successfully. That drive and attention to detail has come in useful now that she’s crossed the bridge into administration.
Since February, Lethbridge College has been part of Apply Alberta, the new province-wide online post-secondary application system. The college also wants to improve the manner in which it communicates with prospective students.
Much of these processes will utilize Kennedy’s IT background, in particular, her expertise with data.
Meanwhile, Kennedy, a believer in lifelong learning, will be working on her doctorate through Aston University in England in work and organizational psychology.
