Stimulated by a discussion on the West
Point Forum, a listserver dedicated to letting USMA graduates debate
a wide range of issues, an idea for an online survey was born. Via
hundreds of e-mail messages over a period of four weeks, the following
group of volunteers, known as the 'consultants', worked through 18
drafts while completing the Survey Questions for West Point Graduates.
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The initial survey used a web interface to collect the data. Despite the efforts by the WP-ORG programming guru, Ditus Bolanos '90, a number of users (especially those on AOL) had trouble completing the survey. Also, JUNO users do not have access to the web and could not submit their input. Consequently, Ditus developed an e-mail only version of the survey in the first week of January, 1998.
Just prior to Thanksgiving, 1997, West-Point.Org (WP-ORG) formed a group of graduates into a listserver called "Consultant". This team was led by Bob Magruder '64, an advisor to WP-ORG and a member of the Communications Committee on the Board of Trustees of the AOG. His survey instrument used by the AOG to survey graduates at the July 1997 President's Conference at West Point, was the starting point for this new 1997 USMA Graduate Survey.
Initially about 5 or so grads came on board and Bill
Welter '55, also an advisor volunteered to moderate and coordinate
the listserver support. Within a few days the "consultant" team grew to
include:
Joe Gilbreth '49 | Gerhard Schulz '49 | |
Dick Breakiron '51 | Lew Casbon '51 | |
Sam Dickens '51 | Lou Michael '51 | |
Bob Johnson '55 | George Lawton '58 | |
Palmer McGrew '58 | Butch Saint '58 |
While the drafts were being done on a nightly basis on a strenuous schedule and pace, another advisor was brought on board to prepare for the analysis phase. Warren Hearnes '89, a doctoral candidate at Georgia Tech, initiated interface software to begin analysis with a sample to be taken on January 8th, 1998.
After 18 drafts the team could see no more needed improvements and then moved onto multiple axes of advance. The consultant team Beta tested the survey instrument for 3 days while Bob coordinated with the AOG leadership for comments and suggestions. At the end of this process, Bob Magruder met with Jack Hammack at West Point where both were attending funerals on adjacent days. In two sessions both were in agreement and the survey and forwarding statement from Jack Hammack were finalized and approved for distribution. On December 19th, at midnight, the first message to the graduates was initiated by WP-ORG with Jack Hammack's request for all USMA graduates to support AOG and USMA by taking the survey. On December 22-23 the remainder of email addresses that were at AOG and not at WP-ORG began to receive notification about the survey.
The first survey was received by 0600 on December 20th and the survey Plank Holder was none other than Bill Welter who knew it was coming.
Ditus had prepared some special interface programs so that we could monitor data as the surveys flowed into the database at WP-ORG. This was a two edged sword. This data flow got all of us working on data and getting organized for the analysis well before the agreed upon cutoff date for the surveys. We had a few technology problems with the survey and I can tell you that graduates are not reticent to complain when something they want to do does not work. We had well over 5,000 take the survey and probably heard from a couple of hundred that there were serious problems. But as important, the email only, non-internet-capable grads were unable to take the survey and many of them came up on the net requesting fax copies or mailed copies from WP-ORG.
This presented a special challenge to ditus and he responded with a new email survey capability within 3 days and he worked a full schedule during the time frame and we had a lot of added traffic with about 13,000 grads being alerted to the survey.
At the beginning we anticipated about 2000 grads would respond if we were lucky. We planned two reminders, one when the new email capability was ready and the other when we figured those on Christmas leave had returned home. Each reminder went to all graduates and that caused a number of other email messages from those that submitted surveys already and wanted to know why the reminder.
We were overwhelmed when the surveys kept coming and coming and there was little letup before January 8th, the arbitrary date we selected in advance to allow sufficient time for analysis and report preparation to be ready for the February 19-22 Board of Trustees Meeting at West Point.
As the analysis was well underway, a few of the consultants had to depart for prearranged vacations and some subs were called up from the class of '64. Jack Price came in to help the '58 analysis team and Sam Burney came in for a little over a week to help the '49 analysis team. We broke the questions up and did the analysis in teams of classmates from '49, '51, '55, '58, '64. Warren Hearnes provided some technical support to the consultants and ditus worked with Bob to help all of the graduates who were having problems getting the survey to come up properly. We know we still have a lot of work to do to correct some problems with dealing with AOL using the internet.
Considering that graduates are using every type of computer and browser ever made and every type of internet connection that can probably exist, we did a fairly credible job in getting 5158 surveys completed and that is after all duplicates were removed from the database. Another WP-ORG advisor, Dolf Beil, parent of '98, was drafted to support the slide making capability for a briefing the consultants were preparing. Dolf provided some development work to get the data and slide details all married up in time for Bob Magruder to do final changes and publication the night before the briefing. This has been a "just in time" operation all the way. Good planning in some cases, and a lot of hard work in others to make deadlines.
Six of the consultants met for the first time (ever) in Washington, D.C. to brief Harry Griffith, the Vice Chairman of the AOG and Bill Taylor, the Chairman of the Communications Committee for the Board of Trustees.
Meeting the other consultants was a great moment that is only eclipsed by the first meeting of the WP-ORG advisors almost 2 years after being in service. It was at the 3 year mark before all advisors to ditus had met, and that event took place at the Magruders on December 19-21, and started with the release of the survey. Initially WP-ORG was formed with four advisors and that number grew to six after a year plus of operation. Advisors are the board that handle all of the normal board duties with ditus, the technician, and the advisors each with diverse backgrounds and competencies.
The briefing on January 30th concerned the preliminary results of the survey data. It was a great success and this same briefing was given to the AOG Executive Committee two days later. It was decided at that meeting to get this survey briefing to the Board of Trustees on February 19th. With that accomplished, our final step is to get the results of the survey out to all members of the Long Gray Line.
Bob Magruder '64