Selection of administrative software system
As a part of Saint Martin's Title III grant, the university was awarded funding for the implementation of a new administrative MIS system. An "Activity One Advisory Group" was appointed and charged to research the current market and recommend a system that would address Saint Martin's needs while fitting within the funding provided by the grant.

After careful consideration and a great deal of participation from the Saint Martin's community, the committee recommended the purchase of the Sungard SCT PowerCampus system (including Great Plains fiscal software). In May, 2002 the university began the implementation of the new integrated software system designed to support both administrative and academic needs on campus.

Implementation and conversion process: Greg Dillon, a veteran of another PowerCampus project at Multnomah Bible College in Portland, Oregon, joined the Saint Martin's community in May 2002 to oversee the implementation and conversion to the new system. Greg departed May 2004 and was replaced by Tim Nagle who has a title of MIS Department Manager and Database Administrator. Tim comes to us with a strong background in SQL database administration and fiscal software management experience in the health care industry.

Project Status: In July 2005, incoming freshmen and their advisors successfully used IQ.Web, the student and faculty interface to PowerCampus, for advising and to register for fall courses. More extensive implementation of online registration is scheduled for the coming year, with its use for extension campus registration the next major goal. The implementation of online registration required not only configuring and testing the software module, but training faculty and automating IQ.Web and network account creation for students. Online registration of freshmen succeeded not only because of the hard work of the ITS and MIS staff, but also because of the efforts of the faculty advisors and registrar's staff who participated in freshman registration.

Faculty have also begun using IQ.Web's advising and course management features. Division-wide training sessions on these academic facets of the system began in the fall of 2004 and will continue next year.

As for PowerCampus itself, the last of the major business modules, advancement, went “live” in early March 2004 and the old main-frame has been off-line since October 2003. Additional training on PowerCampus report writing continues. In September 2004, the Technology Advisory Group (TAG) replaced the Activity One Advisory Group in order to better institutionalize technology planning and policy-making. TAG continues to review business practices and to make recommendations that will clarify, codify and simplify the operation of some of our support offices.

The conversion and implementation process has had a few bumps in the road and we appreciate the continued patience and flexibility of system users. At this point, most of the serious problems have been addressed and most users are using the new system to our significant advantage! Our remaining task is to get faculty and students online with the full implementation of IQ.Web.