Baker University prides itself on the strength of its faculty-student relations. But disconnected databases and lack of integration stymied the university’s plans. Continued growth might only compound problems caused by outmoded IT infrastructure. It was time for a new foundation—and anopportunity for transformation.

PROFILE
Founded in 1958, Baker University takes pride in its nurturing community of faculty, staff, and students. A private nonprofit university with campuses in Kansas and Missouri, enrollment has grown to nearly 4,000 students in its College of Arts and Sciences, School of Nursing, School of Education, and School of Professional and Graduate Studies. Baker University is consistently ranked as a top university by U.S. News and World Report.

CHALLENGES
As enrollment continued to climb, Baker’s IT group foresaw that the limitations of its infrastructure could eventually erode service quality to students. University leaders sought the most current and advanced enterprise platform available—and a roadmap to get Baker ahead of its growth curve. “We were looking for innovative administrative solutions solutions that would satisfy some increasingly sophisticated needs,” said Simon Maxwell, Assistant Vice President for Information Technology. “But we needed a proven system that would not put our close faculty-to-student relationships at risk.”

To keep pace, the new solution would ultimately address growth as an opportunity to gain new ground. How could interactions among students, faculty, advisors, and staff be taken online to create new efficiencies and possibly improve the quality of service? How might the new system optimize Baker’s investments in outside recruiting services to be more competitive with peer institutions?

Certainly, Mr. Maxwell and his team long understood the concepts of a fully integrated portal and student system. But their ideal solution would be one system capable of serving traditional and nontraditional constituents—across diverse programs and multiple sites— from first contact, through academics and graduation, to career placement and beyond. However, Baker’s entire team anticipated that such a technology would lead to a review and refinement of their policies and practices, to truly take advantage of such a transformative moment. This called for an enterprise software partner that could implement a new system, designed to meet these specific needs, and play a closely supportive role in the change management that would follow.

SOLUTION
After an extensive review of higher education’s leading enterprise software suppliers, Baker University chose Campus Management Corporation. “We were particularly impressed with the depth and breadth of Campus Management’s integrated platform,” stated Mr. Maxwell. “They have a long term model that focuses on continually optimizing the core system. So, post-implementation, our costs will be significantly lower over time because of the breadth of what the system can do.” Baker officials valued Campus Management’s people who brought broad experience and knowledge from across a range of postsecondary education, including traditional institutions and progressive for-profits. Together, Baker and Campus Management revisited many of Baker’s administrative practices, and then configured and implemented the comprehensive “One Campus” enterprise suite. The One Campus solution includes the student services system, portals, business intelligence, and financials and human resources. The new system was operating in less than eight months at Baker’s School of Professional and Graduate Studies. The rest of the institution followed in less than three months.

RESULTS
“We continuously work on tuning the business practices and then enabling the appropriate functionality in the system,” Mr. Maxwell said, describing the configurability of Campus Management’s technology. Mr. Maxwell has found that the new portal has been well received by students, faculty and staff. Graduate school professors report time-savings, such as the ability to electronically submit grades. “Students are able to access grades, unofficial transcripts, a GPA calculator, course and event calendaring and degree audits,” noted Mr. Maxwell. “Information can be accessed across multiple programs and campuses in a real-time framework from any location on the Web.” “The culture change initiated by this project ultimately will help us improve how we do our work,” said Mr. Maxwell. “Baker’s implementation of CampusVue will make the university more capable of appealing to the most desirable students.”