Although the best laid schemes o' mice, men, and women for the upgrade of MHC's student information system (SIS) have temporarily "gang a-gley," in the words of Scottish bard Robert Burns, those involved in the project are undeterred in their pursuit of the "promised joy" of the project.

Mount Holyoke currently uses a student information system (SIS) that includes modules that serve the functions of admission, student records, student billing, financial assistance, and the dean of the College offices. The SIS software was adapted from an application designed between 1970 and 1983; although the applications have done a good job of serving the College's needs, it became evident beginning in the mid-1990s that a major upgrade would be necessary to address the changes desired by users for open access to data, including the Web.

An upgrade of this sort is a tremendous logistical and financial undertaking, and many institutions of higher education have struggled with establishing and/or upgrading student information systems. In March of 1998, the College formed the Student Information Systems Steering Committee to facilitate this complex project. Since then, its members—Jane Brown, vice-president for enrollment and College relations; Madeline Carnevale, director of desktop technologies; Mary Jo Maydew, vice president for finance and administration; Susan Perry, director of LITS (upon Perry's departure from the College, Cindy Legare began working with the committee); and Beverly Daniel Tatum, dean of the College and vice president for student affairs have met regularly to move forward with the project.

One of the first matters addressed by the group was hiring an SIS project manager, and in November of 1999 Michael S. Jewett joined the staff and the committee. In the spring of the next year, the steering committee appointed an eighteen-member project team, comprised of representatives from departments that are involved with student information, and charged them with developing a recommendation for a new SIS software system.

The new system would support the needs of admission, student records, student billing, financial assistance, residential life, and student activities and would interface with the College's financial, payroll, human resources, and alumnae/ development systems. Some of the new student information system's most prominent capabilities will be online application, registration, and degree audit; admission tracking and communications support; the ability for faculty to call up class lists, submit grades, and check advisee transcripts; and ready access for faculty and staff users to the student data needed to do their work.

The project team, and representatives of the faculty, staff, and student body, spent six months in an information-gathering mode in order to select a software vendor for the project. They weighed the costs and benefits of various approaches to student information systems; solicited information about work flow and system needs from College SIS users; defined requirements for a new system; worked with consultants; reviewed numerous proposals from software vendors; and attended several multi-day vendor presentations.

The result of all these efforts was that the College, in October 2000, purchased selected components of the CARS Information System. Since then, MHC and Jenzabar (as CARS is now known) have been actively involved in an in-depth assessment of the College's requirements and in developing implementation plans. These joint efforts have shown that the project scope and product customizations are substantially different than originally anticipated. As a result, both parties concluded in July of this year that the collaboration was not a good fit and reluctantly agreed to terminate the relationship.

Says Jane Brown, "From the outset of the SIS project, the College has demonstrated its commitment to it, and this remains unchanged in light of this bump in the road. Since we need to put purchased core SIS applications in place as soon as possible, and the project team has heightened expertise in software assessment, we are forging ahead immediately with the search for a new vendor."

Brown says that the College also remains committed to purchasing a software package for SIS. MHC will not develop core SIS software in-house. To assist with the new search and incorporate what was learned from the first one, the project team has revised the list of SIS requirements and ranked them to indicate the most critical. Said Brown, "We know that we will not get everything we want from one software package. We expect to compromise; however, we are confident that we will meet all our goals in the long term."

The project team plans to recommend a new vendor by mid-December.