Thank You Marquette!
Since January, Safe & Sound Community Partners’ Supervisor Tim Schermetzler and Safe & Sound Fund Development Director Chris Tischer have been working with Professor Kate Kaiser and the Marquette Business School to identify and design a prototype data system. The goal is to increase our effectiveness in reporting, tracking, and evaluating our efforts in the community. The class is part of Marquette University’s extensive Service Learning Program, whose mission is to facilitate student academic learning through meaningful service experiences, encouraging and enabling Marquette’s faculty and students to positively impact the community. The Service Learning Program seeks to bring campus and community together in partnership to share resources, meet real community needs, and help to educate women and men to become the change agents of tomorrow.
Professor Kaiser put to task over 40 students in her Systems Analysis and Design Class on a semester long project to increase Safe & Sound’s IT capacities. The class focused on two major IT needs: a fund development data system and property activity system used to manage information collected from community organizing efforts.
The students were inundated with information, spread sheets, word files and worksheets currently used and were introduced to the variety of work Safe & Sound does in the community. In addition, the class was introduced to some of the existing IT systems in use in Milwaukee by Nancy Olsen the City of Milwaukee Chief Information Officer including COMPASS and the e-notify system. The students worked in small groups on these projects interviewing staff, researching systems, and searching for a solutions. What the class hoped to achieve was a system to reduce the time required for tracking and reporting and create a more efficient tool which could be used in the office and out in the field.
On May 3rd and 5th, the Class presented their Client IT Needs and Generated Concepts final projects to Safe & Sound. The recommendations were impressive and well researched. The students identified and designed a prototype data system which is affordable, mobile, cloud-based, flexible, expandable and mapable. Perhaps the greatest impact though, will be the increase in efficiency and ability the tool will grant our staff to carry out Safe & Sound’s mission in the community.
Thank you Professor Kaiser and the students in the Systems Analysis and Design Class. Your work helps make a stronger community. Good luck with finals and graduation!
