#1 External Scholarship Improvements:

The University of Western Ontario has survived each scholarship season with one staff member dedicated to all external scholarships at Western (NSERC, SSHRC, CIHR, OGS and OGSST).Many of you have wondered aloud, how is this possible? This presentation will highlight the service and technological improvements that Western has implemented to streamline the external scholarship application at Western. These include:

• Automated average calculation for OGS and SSHRC Doctoral using available EDI and Western grades.
• A ‘100% Accuracy’ initiative that works with our graduate programs to ensure that what is submitted to the SGPS office is correct.
• An external scholarship tracking portfolio added to our student information system that provides a platform for tracking and measuring the progression of the scholarships through application to acceptance.

#2 Electronic Thesis Improvements:

• In August 2010, The University of Western Ontario released a pilot Electronic Thesis and Dissertation service to graduate students. Most current ETD repositories involve only the archiving of final submissions. This ETD service (hosted within Berkeley Electronic Press’ Digital Commons software) coordinates the entire thesis submission process from initial submission and preliminary examination to publication. Since releasing the ETD repository, the following significant positive effects have been observed for those theses submitted electronically:
• Preliminary examination reports have become paperless
• Student monetary cost of submitting theses have been eliminated
• Communications to all stakeholders have been automated
• Quantity of draft paper theses for examiners have been reduced by 80%

This presentation will demonstrate how the repository has been inserted into existing business processes within the Western graduate student experience and how it has improved the thesis submission process for students, examiners and administration.