Clients - University of Alaska
SunGard Higher Education Solutions Help Unify the University of Alaska in a “Land of Extremes”
The University of Alaska serves students across 650,000 square miles at 16 different campuses. The varied terrain of mountain ranges, glaciers, fjords, tundra and rain forests physically separates more than 33,000 students who attend classes.
Despite the natural barriers, the University of Alaska is digitally connecting students all across this land of extremes, using SunGard Higher Education technologies and services to facilitate learning, teaching, research and administration.
The University of Alaska system is a public, statewide institution. The University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA), the system’s largest campus and located in the state’s largest city, has more than 19,000 students pursuing 146 different degree and certificate choices. Within the urban setting, UAA students enjoy spectacular mountain views and miles of recreational trails that wind through the expansive campus.
The University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), in the heart of Alaska’s vast Interior region, is the flagship campus of the university system. UAF carries out most of the University’s scientific research, with an upper campus of research institutes known as the West Ridge. UAF, with over 9,600 students enrolled and 163 degrees offered, is among the top 47 U.S. institutions in funding from the National Science Foundation.
The University of Alaska Southeast (UAS), headquartered in the state capital of Juneau, is a small liberal arts college on the shore of Auke Lake, nestled between the Inside Passage and Mendenhall Glacier. UAS is a leader in distance-delivered education. Its 4,300 students are assured small class sizes and engaged faculty members as they pursue 36 different degree and certificate programs.
“Our unity is in our diversity,” explains Steve Smith, the UA system’s chief information and technology officer. “We must provide exceptional services to our students so they can easily access information and take courses wherever they may live. If students in Fairbanks want to enroll in the nursing program at Anchorage, they can. Using SunGard Higher Education solutions will help us accomplish this and other services.”
The first step toward unifying the University’s operations was to integrate Alaska’s administrative solutions. In 1995, the University migrated from Plus to Banner, the world’s most widely used collegiate administrative solution that provides applications on a single integrated database. Now, with Banner, administrators on the small campus of Sitka share the same data as an administrator in Anchorage.
“The University of Alaska is running a single instance of Banner Student, Human Resources, Finance and Financial Aid across the system for all campuses. This has enabled our University to unify business processes and make all operations consistent from the student point of view,” adds Smith.
Next, the University wanted to launch an enterprise-wide portal, providing students 24X7 access to the campus information they need. To prepare for that implementation, the University once again turned to SunGard Higher Education.
SunGard Higher Education consultants have been working closely with the University to conduct a preliminary inventory of IT assets to develop a coherent architecture plan that ties to the University’s mission and business objectives. By taking this architectural approach to managing the enterprise, the University gains powerful tools and methods for dealing with complexity and adapting to changes in strategy and operations.
“Typically in an academic community, you have great diversity. But there is also a need for standardization to avoid multiple e-mail servers, course management systems, portals, and other technologies,” Smith says. “Enterprise architecture has been identified as one of our top IT priorities for the University of Alaska system.
“Enterprise architecture is especially critical for the University of Alaska because we have separately accredited institutions – four of them within our system. If we can establish unified enterprise architecture across those accredited institutions, we see great possibilities for also working with other institutions, both inside and outside of Alaska.”
This ongoing process has helped lay the foundation for the University’s largest IT project since the implementation of Banner a decade ago – the startup of an enterprise-wide portal. The portal will serve as the gateway for students, faculty and staff to access accurate and personalized information quickly from any computer. In a state more than twice the size of Texas where roads are limited, establishing a centralized digital location for students to find what they need is vital.
“One of the biggest challenges we face in Alaska is providing access to all of our students with a minimum of hurdles. Our goal is to be as transparent as possible, so technology becomes as common place and as easy to use as turning on a light switch when you enter a room,” Smith says.
That light switch for students at the University of Alaska will be My UA portal, powered by Luminis. Luminis will provide the foundation of infrastructure, enterprise applications, content management, and portal features that will give easy access to campus information that students need. The University is currently testing the portal in a pilot phase and is scheduled to make My UA available to all stakeholders in May 2005.
“We chose Luminis not only because it is a SunGard Higher Education solution and the logical extension of Banner, but also because it provided the best functionality compared to solutions from the other portal vendors we evaluated,” Smith says. “The Luminis platform is based on open standards that can better support our University’s future technology choices.”
The University of Alaska has identified three primary goals for My UA: users can log in via single sign-on, reach information and services of interest in three clicks or fewer, and select and customize the information that pertains to their individual needs. SCT consultants were particularly willing to assist the University in meeting the challenges of customizing Luminis to a multi-campus environment.
“My UA will be dynamic, providing the services our students need as they advance through their academic careers. One objective is for My UA to continuously change and deliver information that makes sense to a prospective student, then to an admitted student, then to an alumnus, and perhaps to a parent of a student. Giving users the ability to truly personalize the portal to fit their needs is very powerful,” Smith says.
Luminis also contains content management tools, enabling the University to use out-of-the box templates customized to fit the needs of various departments. These templates feature predefined document structure, layout, design and presentation standards for Web-based information.
“The University of Alaska manages about 100,000 Web pages in our system and that number continues to grow. The question becomes – how do you manage all of the content and keep it fresh throughout multiple departments without burdening staff?” Smith says. “Luminis content management tools will help us address this challenge.”
Luminis Data Integration Suite also will help integrate Alaska’s systems, applications, and databases into a unified whole. “At the University of Alaska, if a student attempts to register for a course and has an unpaid fine, a hold is placed until the fine is paid. Once the fine is satisfied, sometimes a student may experience further problems because the payment was processed in a separate system. Having a truly integrated system will erase this type of barrier and others, providing immediate services our students have come to expect,” Smith says.
The University of Alaska is creating a Unified Digital Campus for the thousands of students it serves. This land of extremes has presented unique challenges for the University to make lives easier for its learners. Through technology, the University’s students won’t need to drive, fly or take a state ferry to access the academic information they need.
“At the University of Alaska, we change people’s lives in fundamental ways. That is my primary motivation for working in higher education, especially in the state of Alaska,” Smith says. “A mother in a small community who can’t go to a University campus for four years can still get the education she needs to enrich her life. Together with SunGard Higher Education, we’ve accomplished great things and will continue to do even more in the future.