Excerpt from the 2015-2016 OIT Annual Report
Shreeya Patel, Wiess College OIT Ambassador
Each of Rice’s 11 colleges has a unique culture and self-governing structure; OIT strives to respect their independence with a student outreach program that works within each college’s system. A resident student in each college serves as their college’s OIT Ambassador for the academic year. Shreeya Patel, the Wiess College OIT Ambassador for the past two years, explained the peer communication system, “As an OIT Ambassador, I have had the opportunity to help other students at my residential college with IT related problems, ranging from printer jams to network issues. My role is to provide resources to help students, at my residential college, with any technical problems they are having. I serve to assist in communicating the opinions of the students to the Office of Information Technology, in order to ensure that students are getting what they need.”
Nich Kwon, Martel College OIT Ambassador
Occasionally, ambassadors are also techies, perhaps computer science majors or already working for OIT. As Nicholas Kwon, a computer science major, explained, “I am Martel College’s OIT Ambassador, facilitating communication between OIT and Martel College. Half of my job is to update students about things like printing and wifi; the other half is to relay technical issues at Martel back to OIT. As a former OIT Student Computer Consultant, I have a deeper understanding of students’ technical issues and how OIT can solve them.”
OIT Ambassadors are critical at the beginning of the fall semester to introduce new students to OIT services and to spread the word on attending a fall study break that provides technical tips. Due to reports from ambassadors, OIT has addressed disruptive wifi issues, installed requested software on college lab computers, and investigated printer issues. Ambassadors have facilitated getting students to like the OIT Facebook page, gathering feedback on issues, and answering many questions.
“Every time students encounter IT problems ranging from downloading software to getting a laptop fixed, I help with my personal knowledge or direct them to OIT services and documents.” Zhifan Li, Lovett College
“The OIT ambassador program gives a friendly face to Rice’s OIT. By embedding a member of the college, the OIT department has a direct channel to the students that live there. I have done everything from sending outage emails and technical updates to my own newsletter. Whenever there are critical changes to Rice’s OIT program, I meet with the college at council meetings, so the communication pipeline is always flowing. My college has seen a major reduction in printer and networks complaints over the last few years and I believe it is strongly correlated to the ambassador program.” Alex Nunez-Thompson, Sid Richardson College