When students become clients By Ghia Osseiran--- "In the seminar they asked whom are we serving? My response was immediate: I'm not serving anybody. I am a scholar and a professional; I work at this university to the best of my ability, that's all!" commented one faculty member referring to the one- day Service Excellence Workshop for faculty members that they attended recently. Faculty members were included in the more than 140 training workshops that have been taking place for AUB management and frontline staff since last November to provide training in service excellence. Provost Heath, head of the oversight team for the initiative whose idea it was to incorporate faculty, explained, "the focus of the workshop is that each of us is a point that represents AUB. " All that people know about AUB, according to the Provost, is the individual contact they have with someone from inside AUB, which leaves that person with the responsibility to represent AUB the way it ought to be represented. What service excellence aims to do is to epitomize that representation. "Service quality really focuses on customer satisfaction," said the Provost. The workshop therefore encompassed managers, frontline employees, faculty and administration, so that everyone speaks the same language. "To say we are speaking the same language means we are committing ourselves to service quality principles," said Dr. Mrad, one of the workshop's facilitators, in an interview. Dr. Randa Antoun, another facilitator, courteously received Outlook at her office, not in an interview, but to specifically emphasize that faculty was only included in the workshop so as to be acquainted with Service Excellence. "We put them in just so that they could learn the vocabulary as well," explained the Provost. In this new vocabulary, established in the AUB Service Excellence Participant's Workbook, AUB is an organization and students are referred to as clients in the organization. It is the responsibility of faculty members and employees to make every interaction "a special customized experience," as stated on page 11 in the workbook. Service quality principles are directed towards improving services in the organization in order to "win in this era" and "be competitive market leaders," as stated on page 5. "We are all here to serve our 'client' which is really the students," said Dr. Mrad. The student is consequently a client and faculty members, under this classification, provide services for their clients. "At the level of consumption I agree," but I find it hard to apply the scenario and the dialogue to academia," said Dr. Dadoyan in an interview. She also questioned the classification of customer-client, which is contingent on one's image of oneself. "If somebody doesn't want to be portrayed in these terms, as many students as well as teachers have expressed their discomfort about the matter, I guess you may not want to impose it on them". The observation, she explained, has nothing to do with the absolute necessity to restructure and improve academia and service at AUB. But when students become "clients" and AUB is rendered a business organization like any, then there seems to exist a "crisis of value and relationships", as Dadoyan put it. "What is of value in a teacher, what is of value to a student beyond knowledge and training, if not one's integrity and humanity?" she wondered. "Service excellence for the institution as a whole, is a must to remain the best, if one can afford it, despite the proliferating competition." But in this global race, everyone has a specific role and corresponding ideals of excellence, she added. "Therefore we should review the relevance of the education we offer to our students: are we giving them what it takes to recreate a better society, both within and without AUB? This is how I understand competition and excellence," concluded Dr. Dadoyan. Facilitator Dr. Ghaddar noted in an interview that faculty members in general were not as appreciative of the workshop as management was, "because they thought this is business oriented more than it is academic oriented." Yet AUB's academic success does heavily rely on its economic success as Dr. Mrad pointed out. "We have to be able to attract and compete in the market. I know these are business terminology but this is what keeps the bottom line going and this is what keeps this place open." Dr. Moatasim Sidahmed, another faculty member, thought service excellence, "a comprehensive package that served as a reminder. It's good to have such training for the faculty and it's a positive thing." His only objection was that service excellence was geared towards the employees and yet it lacked the most important aspect, that of cultural diversity and sensitivity. "Diversity enriches our university whether it is diversity in race or color because people have to learn tolerance, the acceptance of the other. This is service excellence." In a chain linking the administration to the faculty, and faculty to students, Sidahmed explained how if faculty members are not treated well it reflects on the way they deal with students. Service excellence ought to start from the administration. "Bylaws should be changed to empower faculty. You have to set checks and balances that'll protect the freedom of speech of the faculty. Faculty should become more secure in their jobs," stated Dr. Sidahmed. Michael Lyons from student affairs thought the workshop very useful for those subjected to it for the first time. "You get a lot of people who have been here for many years and they're doing good work but what they're doing is the same thing they've been doing every year." Service excellence is a way to strive against this stagnation for as the workbook states client needs are ever evolving. Provost Heath asserted service excellence was the beginning and not the end nor an immediate solution. "Service excellence," he stated, "is not a completely transforming experience all at once. The purpose of this workshop as far as I'm concerned was just to start, just to provide a vocabulary that we can start and some 'parking lot' issues." But it is just this vocabulary that leaves one vigilant, particularly when it emanates from a corporate Western Company like Grid International when, as Lyons suggested, "it should come from within." By adopting such a materialistic approach towards AUB under the banner of evolution, we are however forgetting, as one faculty member reminded us, "that AUB is a spirit."