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I. Minutes reviewed. No changes. Welcome Beth Trinh to CIT!
II. Oracle/People Soft merge discussed. Oracle has committed to develop People Soft v 9. People Soft v10 is a new merged platform and will require additional training.
III. Training Updates
A. Receiving positive feedback so far on Intro to SA & Financial Aid I & II. People are able to navigate well, open screens, comments on ease of access, easy to learn.
B. Concern was raised about not receiving complete training. Feels piece-mealed.
C. Lauren was encouraged by the speed of the system while at district office. Rich stated that we will receive an increase in bandwidth (2x faster) and an additional $3.5 million worth of new hardware will be purchased to support the new system.
D. Potential training calendar was distributed. We cannot book any rooms until after the go no go meeting on 1/11. Training will probably be done in the afternoons. Reminder was given that this is actual student data and that security statements must be signed and turned in to Barbara Boros and you must complete the FERPA tutorial before training can begin.
E. Only two people per area will be signed up for Train the Trainer sessions. Lauren suggested we hold some train the trainer trainee sessions immediately following… Once all our trainers are established we will begin staff sign ups. All manuals are supposed to be available on-line by the end of the year.
F. Faculty will have their own self-service training sessions.
G. The missing WLA (Web based learning assistant) is not just an EMC problem. The current fix hasn’t worked but they are still working on it.
H. Train the Trainer opportunity. Paula Yslas has come up with a workshop to help us deliver the training more effectively. It will be held here on 2/8 from 1-5pm. Beth Trinh sent an email prior to our meeting about this opportunity and passed around a sign up sheet for all those interested. Beth will also find out if the same workshop is being offered to other sites and when for those who cannot make this one. If you would like more information regarding this training please contact Beth directly at 5-8128.
IV. Student Help Desk Update
A. An idea came out of the Blackboard Alliance to have a centralized student help desk. The proposed budget of $245,000 will most likely prevent this. The budget includes 5 staff and one manager. The group discussed a visit to the NAU campus to see how they are doing it.
B. Concerns were raised over if this (centralized center) would actually be the best type of service we could provide our students. There would most likely be issues specific to the EMCC campus that if routed through a centralized help center would take more time to solve raising the frustration level of students. How will they separate technical calls from functional calls? Ideally anyone (faculty, staff and students) could call in and be assigned to a specific tier level for service.
C. Rich suggested we press on and learn as much as we can to determine what will be the best solution for our campus.
V. College Readiness Checklist
A. Lauren will send out checklist again via email. Please review and enter in the dates for your areas of responsibility. District wants to see these by the first week of January. Please complete and return asap.
VI. Self Service Computers
- All GX1’s are scheduled to be upgraded. 5 for adjunct faculty. Any additional units needed will have to be put through via capital requests or division plans. All current computers are capable of running without problems.
- Rich and Patty will provide us an update of the upgrade plan.
VII. Campus Communications
- An email will be sent to the EMC campus announcing the NSS dates and some general information.
- All Employee Meeting (replaces the Faculty Forum); Lauren is hoping to show Faculty the self-serve features. Can show them the Student Portal as a back up. It was suggested that whatever we show them needs to be clean and brief to gain support for the new system.
- Lauren is scheduled to do a Lunch and Learn (one hour) and the group discussed if it were possible to combine the FERPA & the NSS in this time period. Angie, Barbara and Lauren will discuss the feasibility of this and report back to the group.
- How will we communicate the change to the students? Other schools are putting together their materials announcing the new system. A sub-committee was formed including Beth, Jennifer, Kim Mounts, Angie. Lauren and Leda. They will get together and report back to the group. Our goal was to keep the message as low key and positive as possible. Concerns were also expressed about the increase in Financial Aid lead times and how this would impact our students. Again message should be positive, not necessarily advertised something like “We’re building a new system to better serve you…” This should help to relieve some anxiety. Largest impact to students right now is that they will be unable to view their awards on-line until July.
- Functional Leads need to disseminate information quicker and to the correct people.
VIII. Resource 25 Information
A. Project Managers Debra Sheldon and Susan Staal provided the group a demo of the new R25 scheduling software. It appears it will be a great tool to help Susan. CGCC is currently using this program. A small sub-team (Rich Marmon, Susan Staal, Debra Sheldon and possibly Roger and Herschel) will be working on developing this. More info as it emerges.
IX. Uses of NC500 classes
A. Kirsten reported that the NC500 #’s are going away. Function will be the same but will be handled differently. She passed out a key. We’ll need to identify groups and then label them in the system. Events such as orientation will be listed as events in NSS as opposed to non-credit classes. Special fees that currently use NC500 will be handled through the fiscal office. Kirsten believes that NSS is easier than NC500. Should be a huge improvement. She will provide us with more info. later.
XII Functional Area Reports
A. Financial Aid- last training is today (12/16). Seems to be going over well. People will have what they need to do their jobs. Next batch of training will begin in March.
B. R25- Training for the district will be in February 05. Debra and Susan will attend.
C. Advisement- Tonya Hill is the NSS lead for Advisement. There is a meeting 2/8 where she will create scenarios for advisement staff to work with.
D. Enrollment- Cancellations are quite different from current system. Barbara ran a trial purge- and sent mailers (we may get phone calls with questions. 1/5 is the next real purge!! Many issues regarding the purge continue to be worked on. It was noted that NAU does not purge records
E. Faculty is confident that they can master the new system.
F. IT- Big crash did affect People Soft. District is analyzing the problem. It was a huge wake up call. Maintenance agreements and back up procedures and human procedures are being scrutinized. Rich will receive a report and update the group. Concern with the loss of confidence in systems. This will require a strong effort on the part of the district to regain it.
XIII. Next Meeting: Friday, January 21 @ 9:00-10:30am in the Komatke Conference Center | 
