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Student System: The Colleague student system includes the following areas: Admissions, Registrar, Financial Aid, and Accounts Receivable. There are also some smaller modules like Campus Organizations and Residence Life. Each of these areas will see some wonderful benefits including full integration with one another. For admissions, they will be able to import test scores and prospect data, and the counselors will be able to easily track their prospects. The registrar will be able to easily prepare the schedule of classes using Schedule 25 to quickly and efficiently schedule classroom space. In addition, the registrar will be able to automatically evaluate transfer credits, and prepare an online education plan for our students with course forecasting for us.

The Financial Aid office will be able to integrate with external agencies to gather need and loan information and take advantage of automated packaging for some of their awards. The Student Accounts office will be able to produce invoices that are correctly calculated eliminating the need for the office to hand-write balances on the bottom of the bills. In addition, registration holds can be automatically added to and removed from student records based upon certain criteria.

Human Resources: Currently, the Human Resources office maintains most of its information in external Excel databases. Using Colleague, the office will be able to fully integrate data with the rest of the administrative offices on campus, be able to manage employee leave plans, and manage the employment application process using a workflow routine.

Financials: The financial system provides the General Ledger, Purchasing, Accounts Payable, Budgeting, and Fixed Asset modules. Each of these areas will see huge improvements, but one of the most notable will be the ability to provide online requisitions, purchasing, and associated approvals. Another benefit will be easier student refund processing by integrating with the Accounts Receivable module.

Advancement: The Advancement series of modules incorporates gift and pledge processing. This area includes gift/pledge processing, major donors, and uses communication management heavily.

Since the contract was signed and financed by Jackie Travisano at the end of March, lots of work has been done! There is a core team of people that is already working on the basic set-up of the system. Once the set-up is done and we are ready for campus-wide decisions and testing, we will be incorporating other faculty, staff, and students from across campus. Currently, this team includes the following people from the main administrative areas on campus:

• Admissions: Gail McDonough, Susan Shutter, JoAnn Simpson, Kelly Skeehan, and Evonne Thomas
• Advancement: Lawna Blankenship and Amy Lloyd
• Finance: Neil Bayer and Dawn Pettit
• Financial Aid: Joyce McDermott and Natalie Wilson
• Human Resources: Carey Libertini, Evan Tachoir, Andra Tokarsky
• Information Technology: Stacey Osterman, Monika Schwartz, and Karen Sturgeon
• Institutional Research: Catherine Ott
• Registrar: Laura Deutsch, Kathleen Larkin
• Residence Life: Mary Beth Halferty
• Student Accounts: Ginny Mikulan and Linda Root
• Student Life: George Sliman

So far, the 8 servers have arrived and are in the process of installation, the group has been working diligently on removing duplicate records from the CARS system, and the group has started process mapping our current procedures. Our Business Practices Manager from Datatel arrived April 24th and April 25th to review a series of discovery documents completed by the various offices and to start planning the timeline for the implementation. We have already scheduled about 20 training and consulting dates. Stay tuned for more information and updates as we proceed through this exciting conversion.