Today we turn loose the reviewers to pound on the system, to scour the report for every error of fact or punctuation or spelling or what-have-you, and to make our tech support folks climb the walls as they try to keep up with bugz-reports.  It’s half-exciting and half-scary as we realize that we’re running toward deadline.

We already have plans in place to print the final document (20 copies, sheesh) and to assemble the notebooks for shipping.  Looks like we’re in for some long nights over the next week.

Has it been worth it?  Basically, yes.

We’ve seen that, for the most part, things really do work they way they’re supposed to work.  The occasional glitch would pop up, and we’d try to figure out why it was a glitch and how best to fix it.  Serious glitches?  Nope.

So, onward, my comrades in editing!

…but that tunnel still seems awfully long from here - and that light still seems mighty small.

Okay, we’re getting there. We are pushing to finalize all last edits before we turn it all over to the folks who will “bang” on the review site to test the system, the documents, and the accessibility. Lauraine O’Neill in Communications has done a great job of putting together the notebooks for the “hard copies” of the report - and they look cool. (Okay, that mermaid theme bothers ME a bit, but I can live with it.) Rhonda and Reena are still wrapping up edits. Robert has enlisted a small army of folks to bang on the system next week. Simon and Mona are already putting things in final form for those reports that are really done. (There are more than I’d expected.)

Okay, so this isn’t a lot of news for you, but it’s great news for the team!

Sunday, 12 August 2007.

Today we submit a draft version of our Compliance Certification Reports for review by a group of officials at The Commission on Colleges, Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.  The submission consists of a memo detailing instructions for navigating the documents, a single 3 MB file that is a .pdf version of our entire certification report (including all the principles and responses), and, possibly today or tomorrow, a submission about our QEP (the review exercise).

Putting this together has been an interesting experience.  People have suddenly gone into high gear to identify the problems that “must be fixed.”  Let’s see:  All those document descriptions that we list with each report (or response to each principle or standard) needed to be reviewed for misspelled words.  Hmmm.  Then some of those descriptions didn’t make any sense.  (HB254 removal?  Uh, no.  That’s HB 254, legislation that removes a restriction on UT Dallas’s student population.  Oh, yes, that.)

Serenity has done yeoman’s service here - editing and re-editing until her eyes seemed permanently glazed over.  Simon turned out new tools and software at rapid pace, breaking even his own land-speed record.  Metta worked into the night to prepare a usable document.  Robert found that there are limits which even he cannot escape in life.  JoyLynn, Rhonda, and  (Mr. QEP himself) John worked and worked to finalize responses to the “review exercise.”  Ben has developed fat fingers from all the last-minute data entry work.  Mona has struggled to keep the rest of us sane while managing to keep her own projects on a steady path.  Abby’s been rewriting text on a couple of major areas.  Hey!  It’s been a rough week!
Alas, we’re about to press the “send” button and ship this stuff off into the ether that is the internet.