"A Safe and Secure Computer You Should Have," Yoda

Another reminder...the title inspired by Stars Wars - Return of the Sith - which I've been watching a great deal with my 5-year old son Lucas...

Ok...so the reminder.

It is very important for ASC Chairs and volunteers to regularly secure, purge, and otherwise be sure that interview reports, or other confidential descriptions, reports, or notes about applicants be discarded from laptops, hard-drives, and portable storage devices.

I also need to remind myself to look about my desk for confidential printed materials which should be shredded.

Identity Theft, and secure storage of documents has been on my mind lately...and I wanted to start us thinking about this once again....as we move throughout the 2005-06.

A better set of colleagues - we could not ask for.

Jerry
Isabel
Nareth

What happened to the CCs of Alumni Interview Reports?

So what happened to the copies of the interview reports sent to ASC Chairs and to the ASC Volunteers?

Some history:

Two years ago, we switched to a secure (SSL) receipt of online interview reports to protect the integrity and the confidentiality of these reports. This protection was part of our ongoing efforts to offer the safest and most secure transmission of information for our volunteers and applicants.

One of the holes in our practice was that we continued to send CCs (or copies of these interview reports) via email to our volunteers and chairs. This was not a best practice, and certainly not a secure and safe way to transmit confidential information about applicants to Chicago.

For the academic year 2005-06, I have temporarily discontinued this practice while I explore and then implement a secure and safe means to transmit or provide access to this information once again.

I realize for Chairs that you have depended upon these copies to provide ongoing instruction, advice, and training to your volunteers but potential gains when weighed against the potential exposure was too great to continue our current practice. I know this is important to both ASC Chairs and ASC volunteers and finding a solution remains a high priority of mine, and our work here.

Until then, might I suggest that you ask new ASC volunteers to drop a copy of the their reports in the mail for you to review, or ask them to "talk the report through" with you before submitting the report. Then you will be able to get a feel for the report even before it reaches us.

I hope that this does not feel like one-step forward, two-steps backward.

Happy Thanksgiving

Friends:

I wanted to share with you my personal thanks for all of your efforts on behalf of the College and the Office of Admissions. This work takes on a very personal nature for me as I glance up and look at a picture of the late J. Robert Ball, Jr. who served the office for so many years as the ASC Director and my first mentor in the Admissions Office.

Taking a moment away from the glitches, bugs, and otherwise sometimes exhausting effort of re-launching a new information architecture for the ASC assignments, I wanted to share with you a message that we are sending to about 43,000 prospective students today about Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving in Hyde Park; it also has some wonderful news about 3 recent Rhodes Scholars awarded to Chicago students, and our athletic success on the playing fields.

Here's the link:
http://phoenix.uchicago.edu/htmlemails/updates/template_thanksgiving05.html

Again, on behalf of Michael and Ted, we wish you and your family the very best for the Thanksgiving holidays.

Jerry Doyle, '81
Isabel Gomez, '04
Nareth Phin, '07

Interview Write-ups - 3,750 characters

Elaine wrote the other day that she and a few of her interviewers were surprised by the recently imposed constraint on the website regarding the length of interview write-ups.

I know that as Chicago alumni we have always cherished our ability to write at considerable length regarding our conversations with applicants. Those of us who have been doing this for some time recall writing interview reports by hand, typing the interview reports, and most recently a transition to submitting reports online.

Over the summer we installed a new database which constrained our abilities to accept reports longer than 3,750 characters. You can well imagine that Ted did not like a machine, or a set of coding limiting what we could do...but this is where we are for now. In the future, we hope to resolve this to give all Chicago ASC volunteers the space (not quite infinite) to capture the details of their conversations.

Until then, I thank you for your support and efforts - and understanding.