Stephens College Automates Campus Administration with PowerCampus UDC

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 08/14/08
Stephens College, located in Columbia, MO, has chosen to replace its legacy administrative software with the PowerCampus Unified Digital Campus (UDC) from SunGard Higher Education. Built on Microsoft technologies and integrated with Microsoft Dynamics GP, PowerCampus UDC automates processes such as admissions, academic records, advancement, billing and cash receipts, financial aid, finance, and human resources, and provides portal and self-service tools.

"After analyzing our business processes we determined that we were not going to achieve the efficiency we needed until we made a quantum leap with a change to a new system," said Douglas Lange, VP of operations and facilities at Stephens College. "The PowerCampus UDC provides us with a significant opportunity to dramatically reengineer our entire process to improve the way we do business while helping us to provide more and better services to our constituents."

The 1,000-student school has experienced an enrollment increase of more than 50 percent over the last four years. Its legacy system lacked the ability to integrate with other campus systems, resulting in administrative and IT staffs having to complete many business process tasks manually. In addition, the legacy system didn't support online services.

Some of the new online services the College plans to provide through the PowerCampus UDC include online management of financial aid accounts, creating degree plans online with an advisor, and integration with learning management and other campus systems.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

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