Pearl River Community College

Challenge

Embrace best practices in technology with limited resources

Results

• Improved business process efficiency
• Data-driven decision making
• Freed-up staff to focus on student outcomes

Summary

Education's changing. It's changed just in my short career over the last 20 years. And, as we look forward, we can see that we are preparing students, not only for today's needs, but needs that don't even exist yet. We really respond to industry needs. So, what's hot right now—four or five years from now, we may completely change our focus.

As a new president, one of my biggest challenges was to try to make sure we embrace technology, that we looked at all the opportunities that were available to us. Unfortunately, right now, no college in the country has enough money. We can't be all things to all people. But what we do have to do is try to continue to support those things that we do best.

Pearl River Community College decided to outsource its technology services, really to try to find best practices. We chose Ellucian Technology Management Services because we feel like they're the best. If we're going to bring somebody on our campus to ultimately impact the lives of our faculty, our staff, and our students, we want the best. And I'm proud to say they haven't let us down.

One service that they've provided, kind of, that exceeded my expectations was the ability to look at our processes, the way we handle enrollment management, the way we have admissions, and the way we have financial aid, the way we have our business office. And, so, they've come in, and they've changed a lot of those processes. They've made us more efficient. They've really allowed Pearl River Community College to provide a better product to our students.

What Ellucian has been able to do is allow us to make data-driven decisions. It has allowed me, as president, to ask the right questions. And they are able to provide that back to me. And, then, I can decide at that point, with my team, on where we need to seek funding, where we need to put funding, what we need to make a priority.

But, through the use of technology, we were able to become efficient and not necessarily replace people. Technology did not come in and change the game to the point we didn't need those people. We were just able to expand our strategies. We were able to expand our resources to allow those individuals to do more for our students.