Thursday, April 18, 2002

Some Colleges Find That Big Systems Upgrades Are Going More Smoothly By FLORENCE OLSEN Most people on college campuses have heard horror stories about institutions that spent many months -- and millions of dollars -- trying to modernize their administrative-computing systems. But now some institutions that are into their second or third upgrade cycles say that the process is getting easier, although it's still not painless. The improvement can be credited partly to the system manufacturers, who are releasing products that appear to have fewer bugs, and partly to the colleges, many of which learned the hard way that they must be extremely careful about upgrade procedures. Administrative-staff members at Grand Rapids Community College have grown accustomed by now to "navigating" within its systems' integrated databases, says Peggy Hallacy, who is project manager for the college's recent administrative-systems upgrade. Ms. Hallacy says she realized that when she began teaching staff members how to use PeopleSoft 8, the latest generation of software from PeopleSoft Inc. For many staff members, she says, upgrading to PeopleSoft 8 has been a mere "bump in the road." Ms. Hallacy says, however, that colleges should be prepared to offer a class in how Web browsers work with the new software. PeopleSoft 8 is different from all previous versions in that it uses screens and communications protocols that are familiar to anyone who uses the Web. "I would encourage anybody going to PeopleSoft 8 to do browser training," Ms. Hallacy says, so that people fully understand the concept of using a Web browser instead of Microsoft Windows for entering or finding data and for printing reports from the system. Officials at the University of Louisville, which completed a similar upgrade recently, say the process was surprisingly smooth. "It's really complicated stuff, and you really have to know what you're doing," says Ronald L. Moore, the university's vice president for information technology. But, he adds, "it went better than I had expected." The California State University System is still testing its PeopleSoft 8 student systems at its Fresno State, Sonoma State, and Maritime Academy campuses. "We've been very disciplined in our implementation," says Charles B. Reed, chancellor of the Cal State system, "and that discipline has paid off." Grand Rapids upgraded its PeopleSoft systems in mid-March. On April 4, the college successfully completed its first registration and advising day using the new Web-based student system. A total of 875 students registered that day "with minimal staff assistance," which was not the case during past registration days, says Pat Burns, executive director of financial services for the college. She says that about 54 percent of the students used the Web registration software, and 27 percent used the college's telephone-based TouchTone registration system -- the highest-ever percentage of students to register on their own at the college. Students, for the most part, required no special training to prepare for registering online or using the other "e-applications" that are part of PeopleSoft 8, Ms. Hallacy says. Students regard online registration and other online academic services "as just a matter of everyday life," says Juan Olivarez, president of the community college. Meanwhile, he says, "we older people see this as a change and kind of a challenge for us." Unlike previous versions, PeopleSoft 8 has built-in functions for administering open-entry/open-exit classes, in which students choose when they start and complete a course of study, says Victoria Janowiak, executive director for college advancement and project leader for the systems upgrade. Grand Rapids, like other community colleges, she says, offers many such independent-study opportunities. For the upgrade, the college shipped its database tables to PeopleSoft's upgrade lab in Chicago, where PeopleSoft experts "built the upgrade scripts for us," says Robert A. Engmark, executive director of information systems. Mr. Engmark says he advises other institutions to do the same. Mistakes made in handling institutional data, he says, are one reason major software upgrades sometimes turn out badly. At a time when most corporations are said to be making few new investments in information technology, Grand Rapids and other higher-education institutions are not holding back on technology spending, says Mr. Olivarez, the Grand Rapids president. If anything, he says, institutions are looking for ways to pay for more information technology, not less. "We have to keep moving forward," he says. "We have a long way to go." This year, the college will spend 8 percent of its $61-million annual budget on information technology. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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