Practical Process Engineering for Higher Education

Both Glendale Community College (GCC) and Oklahoma City Community College (OCC) have undertaken reengineering projects, termed process engineering programs, enabling the colleges to serve more students within current space, time and staffing resources allocation by dramatically improving their processes. GCC's project, the Process Engineering Program (PEP), applies the discipline of systems engineering to processes, thus creating a highly structured methodology; employs a proactive change management program; uses existing college resources; and integrates the program into planning and management activities. OCC's Project VIRGIL utilizes a highly-structured design model, influenced by cross-functional teams. This paper describes the methods and tools of process engineering as applied to these educational institutions and discusses the lessons learned by both organizations.