New Mexico CC Collaborative Chooses Workday and CampusWorks for Consistent Student Experience

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 08/24/21

A community college collaborative formed earlier this year to develop shared services expects to launch its first programs shortly. The Collaborative for Higher Education Shared Services (CHESS), which was started by five schools in New Mexico, announced that it is working with Workday's suite of applications, which includes enterprise planning, financial management, human capital management and student services. The project will be aided by CampusWorks, a higher education consultancy, to provide an independent perspective and additional components of the system.

In coming months, the original five CHESS colleges – Central New Mexico Community College, Clovis Community College, Northern New Mexico College, San Juan College and Santa Fe Community College – will work with Workday and CampusWorks to set up multi-institution HR and financial services modules, followed by a student service platform intended to handle numerous aspects of the student journey, from recruitment and registration to completion and career.

Implementation, which is expected to start this fall, will be structured to enable other U.S. colleges to participate in the adoption too.

The project's goals are ambitious. The big ones are to improve the student experience with easier access (one application, one set of student records); enable students to take class offerings from any of the member colleges for faster degree completion; and provide a consistent experience across member colleges, so regardless of where students are enrolled, the platforms and processes will be the same.

Other objectives include:

• Helping close achievement gaps in New Mexico, a majority-minority state;
• Reducing costs for students, member colleges and taxpayers;
• Boosting services by sharing personnel resources and expertise;
• Adapting and standardizing best practices among member institutions;
• Creating shared, standardized reporting to state and national entities;
• Improving the security and access to data and student information; and
• Providing modern solutions for institutions that otherwise couldn't afford them.

"This is another major milestone for our partnering colleges as we prepare for the next steps on this groundbreaking journey," said Central New Mexico CC President Tracy Hartzler, in a statement. "Together with Workday, we're ready to get to work on creating a consistent and exceptional higher education experience for students across all of our colleges. We will provide students outstanding support every step of the way. Respecting our distinct colleges and cultures, this new system will help us align our systems and business processes, share expertise and be more collaborative – all to better serve our students. We hope that this unique higher education collaboration will help other colleges in our state and across the country realize what's possible when institutions – our boards, our presidents, our faculty and staff – commit to working together to achieve historic progress on behalf of students."

"Clovis Community College and the CHESS colleges are devoted to the primary mission of providing student success and completion and equitable outcomes to all of our students," added Charles Nwankwo, president of Clovis CC. "Workday has a solid reputation for delivering systems that serve students holistically, resulting in increased student success. I believe the CHESS colleges have found a committed and worthy partner in Workday. We at CHESS look forward to this partnership and the opportunity to move services to our New Mexico students to the next level."