Blinn College Moves to Unified Digital Campus

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 07/23/09

Blinn College, a two-year college in Texas, has chosen the Banner Unified Digital Campus (UDC) from SunGard Higher Education to improve campus effectiveness and communication. The college has licensed Banner Student, Financial Aid, Enrollment Management Suite, Operational Data Store, Document Management Suite, and Workflow, as well as the Luminis Platform.

"Two key components of our strategic plan are student success and improved communication," said Van Miller, vice president of administrative computing services. "First and foremost, we expect the Banner UDC to play a key role in improving student success in and out of the classroom. Just as important, however, is the expected improvement of communication between the college and its students, as well as internal communication within the college itself. We feel our relationship with SunGard Higher Education will be well received by the entire college community."

In addition, the business process capabilities available within the SunGard Higher Education Banner UDC will help ease the transfer process for Blinn students and the administrative staff. The college has the highest percentage of academic students who transfer to and graduate from state universities in Texas. The majority of Blinn transfer students go to Texas A&M University and Sam Houston State University, both of which are SunGard Higher Education customers that have chosen Banner UDC solutions.

Blinn College also will benefit from its membership in the Texas Connection Consortium (TCC), a unique collaboration among SunGard Higher Education, the State of Texas, and 39 other Texas state institutions. Since 1995, the TCC has provided Texas-specific solutions, including software, support, documentation, and collaboration at no extra cost to meet state-mandated reporting requirements and other client-driven enhancements.

"We like the fact that SunGard Higher Education is able to support the State of Texas reporting requirements with the model it has in place in the form of the Texas Connection Consortium," said Christine Wied, director, administrative computing services. "And we expect that Banner will help us better manage our enrollment growth by providing more online services and self-help features, so that students can get the assistance they need when they need it."

According to Wied, the institution recently started its project planning sessions and will roll out the Banner modules incrementally. She said the college expects to have all modules live sometime in 2011.

Blinn has four campuses in Texas.