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Ms. Janet Dillon - Outstanding Staff Award
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| Ms. Janet Dillon |
Janet Dillon, Systems Developer and Analyst for the FLC Information Technology Department, sees her job as being about creating more efficiency across campus to better serve the students. It’s a task she’s been successful in doing as evidenced by her being named this year’s Outstanding Staff Award winner.
Among the accomplishments that she’s most proud of is the implementation of electronic transcripts. To this point, students wanting a copy of their transcript had to contact the FLC Registrar’s Office where an employee would process, copy and send the transcript to where it needed to go, all of which took time and effort. Ms. Dillon helped implement a system that will allow students to get copies of their transcripts much faster and easier.
“This way the majority of the transcripts should now be electronic,” she explains. “We can send them electronically to other colleges and prospective employers, and it’s almost instantaneous.”
“There’s so much to do to help people be more efficient in their areas,” she says. “There’s just more demand to automate more effectively.”
Growing up, Ms. Dillon didn’t have much exposure to computers, but she always had an interest in technology. Luckily, as she was studying business in college, her school created a minor in computer science, which she earned.
Not long after graduating, she found her way to Fort Lewis College and spent her years here working to make things run more smoothly. The pace of change in technology ensures she’s never bored, but among her reasons for staying at FLC for so long is a sentiment that many people share.
“Fort Lewis is like a family,” she says.
She’d like to see that family continue to grow and is eyeing ways she can help the FLC Office of Admission. This year the number of new student applications increased dramatically, which led to a lot of extra work for the Admission staff. Ms. Dillon wants to do what she does best for the Office of Admission: cut down on the work and increase the efficiency.
There seems to be no end to the places that Ms. Dillon can work on new and better ways of doing things. That might discourage some, but she finds satisfaction in what she does because she has a very clear understanding of what she’s doing and why she’s doing it.
“I want employees to be able to spend less time with manual tasks that could be automated,” she says, “and be able to focus more on serving the students, because that’s why we’re here.”