Union County College Migrates Student Administration System

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 04/14/09

Union County College in Cranford, NJ will be moving to a student administration system from Datatel. The decision was made after an evaluation process that included week-long vendor demonstrations by two finalists. The newly acquired Datatel technology and professional services will replace an IA Plus system no longer supported by SunGard Higher Education, the college's previous vendor.

"Datatel was the best fit for our institution in terms of functionality, best practices, and total cost of ownership," said Jack Farrell, vice president of administrative services and executive assistant to the president. "With Datatel's technology and services, we expect to expand and bolster services that benefit our student body, faculty, and administration."

The college has licensed Datatel Colleague, an application for managing and streamlining departmental workflows, business processes, productivity, and efficiency. Union County has also licensed Datatel ActiveAdmissions, a recruitment e-marketing application.

"ActiveAdmissions will enable us to attract the best candidates possible for our myriad of programs on our campuses, by providing a custom view for each prospect based on their interests and goals," said Farrell. "In these economic times, it is extremely important to maintain enrollment, while at the same time making sure the institution is right for the student."

College users will access campus-wide information and resources using Datatel's ActiveCampus Portal, a Web-based workgroup collaboration and social networking system. Built on Microsoft SharePoint technology, the portal provides a single point of access across the suite of Datatel programs. "We're very excited about building our portal," said Farrell. "Not only will it extend online registration to our non-credit students, but also allow us to take information from our database and build dashboards for the college's executives to monitor progress in various programs."

Datatel's suite of software performs management functions for enrollment, strategic planning, institutional advancement and marketing, teaching and learning, and performance and operations.

The college has about 12,000 students studying at four campuses in Union County.

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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