Steering Committee for Information Technology
February 20, 2008 Minutes
Members Present: Glen Pinkston, Zoe DuRant, Frank Zittle, Linda Phillips, Ninette Carter,
Lance Janda, Carol Clairborne, Jennifer Holland, Debbie Goode
1. Minute Review/Change/Acceptance of January 16, 2008 Minutes - Minutes approved
2. Next Meeting – March 26 at 11 a.m.
3. DegreeWorks
On 1/17/08, Debbie met with V.P. McArthur and V.P. Pinkston regarding the quote of $120,230
for DegreeWorks (DGW). At this time, it is not possible to fund that amount. They requested
that SBI be contacted and see what we can get for $80,000.
Debbie spoke with Mark Wysoski on 1/17/08 to explore the opportunity of CU performing all or
some of the scribing to reduce the quote. He needed to visit with others and would get back with
her regarding this information. On 2/7/08 Debbie spoke with Mark again asking for DGW quote
and he assumed the group that provides the quotes had already sent it. He is following up on it
with Barbara and Wayne Holt. Mark explained there are two options for go-live with DGW:
• Full services option, which would allow us to come up and be ready to go live - the
$120,230 quote
• Maintenance mode, which we are still waiting for a quote on, but will not exceed
$80,000
SBI determines if they feel the client is a good fit for coming up in maintenance mode. Mark
says if one of our I.T. folks are heavily involved with the scribing, then he feels CU will be a
good fit. Even though scribing is touted for the end-user to be able to code the degree plans, it is
truly not suited for someone that has no programming experience. The maintenance mode will
require an I.T. person and a person from the Registrar’s area that is intimate with the degree
plans to be very focused and working closely together to make this avenue of implementation
successful. He pointed it this will consume the two individuals and basically be relieved of their
day-to-day duties. With this combination, Mark has all the confidence for this being a success at
C.U. The $80,000 should be enough to allow SBI to do the coding of the general education and
possibly one complicated degree plan that we may in turn use for a template to follow.
The client-directed plan requires a 3-day training and consulting time period. It is important the
CU staff stays focused and devoted to the project for the training. SBI does the training on
campus and will allow more than one I.T. staffer to sit in. This is our first step after a p.o. is
generated. SBI’s backlog is currently 6 months from the point they receive a p.o. to starting the
project. Mark noted in some cases, remote training might be a solution to save on money.
We discussed the desire for DegreeWorks to go live with Banner, which will be a July or August
2009 date. Mark feels this is a possibility IF CU personnel can devote themselves to the project.
Barbara Vrana is aware of CU’s desire to go live with this in conjunction with Banner. Mark
indicated the Banner version is more up to date while the SBI Degree Works is a few versions
behind and will more than likely stay that way. He cautioned that CU will have to make sure the
DegreeWorks migration is built into the Banner migration calendar in such a way that there is
Cameron data available in the Banner student system when it comes time to train and verify data
for DegreeWorks.
Linda is interested in learning what UCO is doing with automated degree checks. We will
discuss this again next month. It may be the CAPP module within Banner will serve CU’s needs.
4. Online payment – Ninette reports we are still waiting on login from OSF since October
2007 - the bank has our account set up...the treasurer needs some info from the bank and then it
should go back to ok.gov – Glen asked Ninette to do a daily follow-up until this is resolved.
5. Emergency notification scheduled for Feb. 21st at 2 p.m. - John DeBoard will be taking
over as primary and Jana Gowan as secondary contacts w/ Blackboard’s Connect Ed until Jamie
Glover returns from maternity leave and Jamie hires a replacement for Amber McNeil.
6. SunGard Higher Ed (SGHE) Banner Update
Any comments from Linda and/or Zoe regarding info they learned at SACRAO regarding
Banner? They attended a Banner break-out session. There were about 60 Banner users in the
meeting and they estimated there were probably two per university. There were Banner clients of
20 years to newbies in the meeting. They anticipated it would be a meeting for disgruntled users
to discuss issues about the software. The main discussion was about the poor functionality of
Banner’s recruitment module. Complaints about letters not coming out of the system timely was
one specific they grasped. Folks in the room were saying they are looking at 3rd party modules –
Hobsons seemed to be talked about favorably by Georgia universities. Someone mentioned the
enrollment management about to be released in April is supposed to be better, but folks were
saying they had heard that before from SunGard and it never happens.
They talked to Old Dominion University about their Win implementation and they were pleased
and actually came up in 14 months. Said it was very hard, but they were pleased.
They talked to Jacksonville State Univ. about their Win implementation and they say it is still
going on, and is the worst experience they have ever had. The registration module is not working
at all and they are running two systems due to the issues. Their staff had to manually enter a ton
of data into Banner. Initially, they spent a ton of hours identifying business processes for Banner
and when it came down to it, their time and work was a waste and they had to conform to
Banner’s business processes. They had terrible experiences with the trainers. One trainer would
come in and train and then another trainer would come in and contradict what the other trainer
had said. The parallel systems are very difficult for their staff. Debbie e-mailed Darren Penn,
SGHE Account Manager, the above information to express concern that CU does not want
another botched installation like we had with the SBI installation. The following is his response:
“I always want to know what people are saying about the company, be it good news or bad
news. I can let you know that neither Jacksonville State or Old Dominion are WIN clients of
ours. They are SunGard clients, but neither utilized the WIN implementation process. Maybe
that will help alleviate some of your team's concerns.”
a. Trip to U.C.O. on March 3, the following will be attending: Dawne Massey,
Kelly Simon, Julie Duncan, Rick Clyburn, Debbie Goode, Greg Duncan, Angela
Melton, Chase Bailey, Cheryl Davis, Kurt Jn Marie, Scott Putney, Casey Case,
Jennifer Bowen, Ninette Carter, Lance Janda, Carol Claiborne, Hillary Ashton, Linda
Phillips, Kelli Peterson, Zoe DuRant, Frank Meyers and Jennifer Castricone. Sandra
Thomas from UCO sent the following agenda:
Welcome & Intro 9 a.m.
Divide into Banner modules 10 a.m.
Meet for lunch 12
Other discussions 1 p.m. – 3 p.m.
Debbie will gather a list of questions from the departments and
forward to Sandra on Monday, February 25th
b. Manuals are loaded on the file server at W:\workgrps\its_share\BANNER
c. Blog setup at: http://intranet.cameron.edu/banner - does this seem like a good
idea? We will try it and can take it down if it is not serving any purpose.
d. Hardware quote of $223,185.47for Sun servers is in hand and waiting for March
Regents’ Meeting – Debbie will forward last quote to V.P. Pinkston
e. Barbara Vrana is finalizing the Scope of Implementation Services and will
present to John and Glen on Feb. 21
f. I.T. has access to Banner’s website and the staff are exploring
g. P.O. issued to Telco in the amount of $2,277.42 for additional fiber run from
basement of Admin to server room on second floor
h. P.O. issued to Patco in the amount of $9,000 for additional electrical service
required in second floor server room
i. Cisco switches still need to be purchased – shall the cost be proportioned same as
other expenditures? – V.P. Pinkston authorized this purchase and it should be
divided as the other expenditures. Ninette will setup three accounts for tracking
Banner costs. Debbie will provide information regarding what has already been
committed. We were reminded to ask everyone within our departments to track their
time closely as we did with the SBI Migration.
j. TRAINING location - SGHE requires a dedicated training lab with 15 PCs.
They prefer a conference room adjacent to this area. Suggested locations:
i. Registrar’s area where Janie is located – no security available for
equipment
ii. Northwest corner of N. Shepler 4th floor – This is an office complex. Frank
Zittle offered his training facility, S. Shepler, room 406 and feels confident we
can work together on scheduling. Debbie will find out any additional
equipment needs required by SGHE to accommodate the online training.
7. R23
a. CAM0020 - FERPA Tracking – Julie estimates 10 hours for her part and 2
hours for setup by Chase and/or Cheryl for a total of 12 hours – Approved and
will be given to Julie Duncan to begin work.
8. Scheduling software options
The sales rep from AdAstra contacted Debbie right before Christmas and is more than
willing to come and present a demo. What is the pleasure of the Steering Committee?
This was tabled from the last meeting. Pierre Guay with Infosilem is still interested in
doing a demo as well. – It is decided to wait and see what Banner’s scheduling system has to
offer as we can always add this functionality.
9. Moodle demo by Frank Zittle
a. Moodle is a free, open source course management system (CMS). CU currently uses
Blackboard for online courses. http://moodle.org/ - Frank explained this might be an option
to explore for course enhancements. He has some test accounts setup for faculty to experiment
with. Frank will do a demo at the April meeting. He wants to use it for testing and development
for two years. It appears to be easier than Blackboard and it offers 170 add-on modules. He feels
it has strong potential for replacing Blackboard in the future. We should consider it for internal
training. Many universities are migrating from Blackboard to Moodle. There are vendors for
hosting Moodle to insure 24/7/365 availability.
10. Construction of student IDs - Jennifer Holland brought this to our attention that other
Oklahoma universities are moving away or have moved away from student ID #s in the
construction of student user names. Here is what Debbie found:
OU: 1st 4 char of last name + last 4 digits of OU ID# = good4321
SWOSU: lastname+first initial = gooded
For conflicts: add middle initial
For conflicts: add 1,2,3, etc
USAO: ‘stu’ followed by firstnamelastname (all together) = studebbiegoode
RSU: firstname+lastname (all together) = debbiegoode
For conflicts: add 1,2,3, etc.
Langston: first name.last name = debbie.goode
Fall 2008 would be a good time to make the change
Let’s plan to make a decision at the May 21 meeting – Jennifer Holland will work
with SGA for their input.
11. Any other topics for discussion?
a. Ruckus is being advertised in Collegian
b. M.S. Exchange 2003 to M.S. Exchange 2007 is being rolled out by school and/or
admin department