December 16, 2021
Dear SRJC Community,
As previously communicated, technology available in higher education to serve students, faculty and staff is evolving rapidly. Student expectations are increasing and they wish to have a single source for the things that are important to them: appointments with counselors, registration, personal calendars, financial aid, fees, account balances, program completion status, etc. Additionally, all systems are required to meet the Americans with Disabilities Act Standards for Accessible Design, which states that all electronic and information technology must be designed and accessible to people with disabilities.
Our current Student Information System (SIS) at SRJC is a home grown system developed by the college and originally designed for use by a consortium of colleges. Today, we are the sole college using the system as other colleges have migrated to commercial integrated systems. Our system impacts everything we do, including Payroll, Human Resources, Finance, Financial Aid, Registration, Curriculum, Scheduling and State Reporting. SRJC has greatly benefited from an extremely talented IT staff that have been able to respond to our needs to better serve students but it has taken an increasingly large effort to retain the integration between all the various programs. These technology factors, plus upcoming retirements, put our current technology on a near-term end-of-life path and brings us to this point in selecting a replacement.
The District is in the process of soliciting bids for an ERP/SIS (Enterprise Resource Planning / Student Information System). This software is meant to replace our current home-grown Student Information System, as well as possibly several other systems. Measure H funding has been allocated for this purchase.
The District plans demonstrations of different ERPs that meet our criteria based on results of the RFP process. Each demonstration will be virtual and will take a full week. We currently anticipate seeing demonstrations from three vendors and are planning for these demonstrations to occur during the following weeks in the Spring:
• March 14-18, 2022
• March 28-April 1, 2022
• April 11-15, 2022
• April 26-28, 2022 (technology and reporting sections only)
For your planning purposes, attached is a draft of how the demonstration lineups may occur. These are a draft and may need to be tweaked as we finalize planning but will hopefully allow you to block times for the areas you are interested in participating in.
We recognize that this decision touches every employee and student in this college and are committed to an inclusive, transparent and participatory process. The vendor demonstrations will be open to any employee interested in
participating. It will take a large group of District employees working together to effectively view and grade these products. Please save these dates as times where we will need your participation so that we can get the ERP that best suits our District needs. As we get closer to the dates, we will reach out again with additional details on the demonstrations and solicitation of feedback.
Sincerely,
The ERP/SIS Steering Committee
Debbie Weatherly
Don Webb
Gene Durand
Jane Saldana-Talley
Julie Thompson
Kate Jolley
Kevin Snyder
Pedro Avila
Steph Jarrett