Empowering End Users with Advanced Technology -
Mount Saint Mary College

Visitors to Mount Saint Mary College are impressed not only by its beautiful campus overlooking the Hudson River, but also by its rich liberal arts tradition, state-of-the-art technology, value-centered education, and first-rate NCAA sports programs.

Located just an hour’s drive from New York City in Newburgh, New York, Mount Saint Mary College offers 47 undergraduate programs as well as graduate programs in business, education, and nursing to a student population of 2,600. The College was founded in 1930 by the Sisters of Saint Dominic of Newburgh. In 1959, the College charter was amended by the Board of Regents of the State of New York, enabling the school to accept lay students. Today the College maintains a firm belief in the value of a liberal arts education and a commitment to the Judeo-Christian traditions upon which it was founded.

The College had relied on Jenzabar software to manage its administrative data, running on an IBM AS400 system, since 1995. While this system continued to meet the needs of the College, Executive Director of Information Technology John Bucek was becoming increasingly concerned about the costs of supporting aging hardware. He also recognized that advanced information management systems could help the school attract a new generation of students, improve student retention rates, and create a more robust learning environment.

Mr. Bucek wanted to implement a system that would empower his user community by allowing them to handle simple administrative tasks without intervention from the IT department—enabling them to deliver more responsive service while cutting costs. The selection committee defined several selection criteria, including ease of use, accessibility, robustness of applications, size of vendor installed base, and financial stability of the vendor.

Mount Saint Mary College launched a competitive evaluation of available software, assessing functionality, price, and installation time. After an extensive evaluation of competing solutions, the College selected Jenzabar EX, a Microsoft®-based enterprise software solution. Key to the decision was the institution’s conclusion that other systems would have required a multi-year conversion process and substantial re-training of the IT group. “The database structure of Jenzabar EX is very similar to that of our earlier product, minimizing training time and simplifying data transfer,” Mr. Bucek explains. “It enabled us to plan a conversion that is taking less than a year. It clearly made it a better business and financial decision for the College.

”The new and the existing Jenzabar systems will run in parallel until the conversion is complete in early July 2005; until the conversion is complete, system testing and training will be done with trial data. When conversion is complete, live data will be moved to the new system. “Then we will be ready to go for the next academic year,” the Executive Director notes.

Mount Saint Mary is installing a full range of academic and student administration modules, including Admissions, Advising, Alumni Development, Registration and Student Life. Business administration modules to be installed include General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable and Purchasing. In addition, the College will install Jenzabar system interfaces to CollegeBoard’s PowerFAIDS® financial aid software system, and an interface to ADP®’s payroll system.

Keys to the smooth installation were a detailed project schedule, an on-site project manager provided by Jenzabar, and in-depth user training. “Jenzabar worked closely with us to create a training program tailored to our needs,” Mr. Bucek comments. “We were impressed with Jenzabar’s discipline around all aspects of the project’s implementation. In addition, the outstanding customer care, innovative products, and measurable results we’ve experienced confirm that Jenzabar was the right choice for us.”

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