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In This Issue

It's a Banner Year!

by Morgan Timmermann

When we learned Drew University was switching to a brand new Enterprise Resource Planning system called Banner, we were excited. This new software system is an adventure that everyone in the Drew community will share. Banner will certainly be a new, common bond between departments. It is also a learning experience—one that needs to be viewed with an open mind toward the future.

Financial Assistance is on target with our Banner go-live date of January 2012. Our office first met with our Strata Information Group consultant, Jill Mackey, in November 2010 for our Financial Assistance Discovery. Since then, our team members met with Ms. Mackey on four more occasions, from January through April 2011. Each meeting was a tremendous step forward in the learning process. Despite the heavy January snowstorms, Financial Assistance zipped through an overview of the numerous financial aid forms. In February and March we learned the details regarding data loads, tracking requirements, and status codes. Our April session covered budgets, their groups and components. Also, even though homework for these sessions can sometimes be tedious, it certainly aids the team in refreshing our Banner memory and thinking about our future with the new system.

It is exciting to think that next year Financial Assistance will be using a new software system. Progress at Drew has a new name, and it is Banner!

Reflections on the Advising and Registration BPA

by Mark Sapara
When I was first asked to participate in the Advising and Registration Business Process Analysis meeting, I had mixed feelings. On one hand, I knew it would be a good opportunity to meet new colleagues as I adjust to my new life at Drew University. However, my past experience with “all day training” events has been mostly negative—boring, redundant, and hardly ever an outcome! So, I looked at this opportunity as a double-edged sword—I’ll meet new people and be bored in the process!

However, the two-day event not only blew my expectations out of the water (primarily because it was not a “training” at all), but it was actually one of the most worthwhile events I have attended in a higher education setting. It was so refreshing to see an institution willing to look at its processes from a different lens. In my experience, higher education works overtime showing how different we are than the business world (and in many ways, it allows for expression and discourse that does not happen in business). However, we sometimes forget that business principles of efficiency, reduction of waste, lack of replication of services, etc. are all things from which we can benefit. In a climate of declining resources and stiffer competition, higher education needs to redefine itself in a way that remains true to its purposes, but recognizes that there are new rules to the game.

I thought that Kari was an amazing facilitator. She had the intellectual muster to garner the respect of the group and did an amazing job of culling the ideas together into a usable and understandable format. Rogers’s transcription of the ideas generated the first day (opportunities and obstacles) was “spot on.” Kari ensured that all voices at the table were heard, but was able to sustain “crowd control” so that those voices didn’t become muted. As a new employee, I felt this was a terrific opportunity for me to bring an outside perspective to this system and I felt that my ideas were heard and respected.

I very much look forward to reading her full report and being a part of the “next steps” in streamlining how we advise and register our students. Again, this was a truly worthwhile venture and I thank Drew for having the foresight to organize this in conjunction with BANNER implementation.

Editor's Note: The report Mark mentions is now available at https://uknow.drew.edu/confluence/display/ERP/Advising+and+Registration+BPA.

New Scheduling Software

by Scott Wood

A committee comprised of members from Housing Conferences and Hospitality (HCH) and the Registrar’s Office, along with representation from University Technology and the Drew360 Catalog and Schedule Team, has recently spent some time considering the future of the university’s course and events scheduling needs. Since 2003, Drew has used Ad Astra for scheduling, and while its introduction represented a great improvement over the old manual system, we never quite realized some of the benefits we originally hoped for.

The committee looked at two alternate solutions (Resource 25 by CollegeNet, and EMS by Dean Evans & Associates). Both solutions provide the ability for the Drew community to easily request and view scheduled events, and provide a rich set of tools and reports that both HCH and the Registrar’s Office will benefit from. While both products represent a significant improvement over Ad Astra, the committee concluded that EMS is the best fit for Drew, and recommended its purchase to the Drew 360 Team Leads Committee and Executive Steering Committee. We are very happy to report the recommendation was approved, and we can begin moving forward with the process of switching Drew from Ad Astra to EMS!

What are some of the improvements we can expect from EMS?

• The ability to easily find and request available space for events via the web.

• The ability to see when and where other events are scheduled.

• For faculty, an improved interface for submitting room preferences for courses.

• For the Registrar’s Office and HCH, tools that will help them produce schedules and create events without some of the laborious manual efforts they currently have to employ.

We have a lot of work ahead of us, but look forward to providing greatly needed improvements to our scheduling process sometime early in 2012!