“It is critical, especially in these tough financial times, that the campuses within the state of Montana work together and share resources in order to achieve economies of scale that allow for efficient and coordinated delivery of services to students,” said Dr. Sheila Stearns, Montana’s Commissioner of Higher Education. “By implementing Banner on all our campuses, we can increase access and services to students through consistent business practices and operations as well as enable seamless enrollment between campuses.” It is a goal of the Montana Board of Regents to have all institutions of higher education in the state use the same enterprise information system. In total, there are now 14 institutions in the State of Montana that have licensed the Banner Digital Campus solution.
“Like most colleges, we are resource limited,” said Dr. Stefani Hicswa, president, Miles Community College. “The Banner Digital Campus will help us streamline our processes and provide us with greater efficiencies to meet this perpetual challenge, while providing better services to our students. The implementation of Banner will help us advance our strategic plan by 10 years.”
“The Banner Digital Campus will help make data more accessible and make our administrative functions more user friendly to students,” said Jim Cargill, president, Dawson Community College. “The digital campus will help move our college into the 21st century and help us provide and continuously improve accessible and effective learning environments for the lifelong educational needs of the diverse communities we serve.”
Some of the specific benefits the colleges hope to achieve with their digital campuses include:
Automation of current manual processes leading to increased productivity
Shared business rules and practices throughout campus and with other colleges
Consistent and accurate data leading to improved data integrity
Common data structure and codes
Improved security of data
Enhanced reporting in support of new accountability measures
“Collaboration is more important than ever in higher education as institutions are working strategically and creatively to address funding and enrollment challenges without sacrificing quality services for their students and other constituents,” said Bruce Bleiman, senior vice president, customer relationships, SunGard Higher Education. “The growing Banner customer community in Montana models an admirable approach to evolving the digital campus, leveraging combined resources and best practices, and independently delivering on their missions of helping students meet their educational goals.”
About Miles Community College
Miles Community College is a locally governed comprehensive public community college founded in 1939. MCC offers credit programs to prepare students for transfer, career and technical programs, developmental educational opportunities, Adult Basic Education and a wide variety of non-credit lifelong learning courses.
About Dawson Community College
Dawson Community College is a public 2 year college founded in 1940. It is part of the Montana University System in Eastern Montana. For more information, visit www.dawson.edu
About Montana University System
The Montana University System is comprised of fourteen campuses, enrolling more than 42,000 students. It is governed by a seven member Board of Regents. The Regents, appointed by the Governor, create policies and procedures that govern the campuses in the University System. For more information, visit www.mus.edu.
About SunGard Higher Education
SunGard Higher Education serves colleges, universities and foundations in 40 countries worldwide. Through its Open Digital Campus strategy, SunGard collaborates with the higher education community and provides software and services to help institutions find better ways to teach, learn, manage and connect. To learn more, please visit www.sungardhe.com.
About SunGard
SunGard is one of the world’s leading software and technology services companies. SunGard has more than 20,000 employees and serves 25,000 customers in 70 countries. SunGard provides software and processing solutions for financial services, higher education and the public sector. SunGard also provides disaster recovery services, managed IT services, information availability consulting services and business continuity management software. With annual revenue exceeding $5 billion, SunGard is ranked 380 on the Fortune 500 and is the largest privately held business software and IT services company. For more information, visit www.sungard.com
Trademark information: SunGard, the SunGard logo, Banner and Open Digital Campus are trademarks or registered trademarks of SunGard Data Systems Inc. or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and other countries. All other trade names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.
Source: Media Newswire
