By Jeremy Logan & Mallory Biggar
Oct. 15, Volume 47 Issue 1
Shouts can be heard from the SUB lounge. Papers and random objects are tossed through the air, while students stomp out of the Financial Aid department, in frustration over Washington State’s newly developed ctcLink software.
On Aug. 24, SFCC, SCC, and Tacoma were the first community colleges to pilot ctcLink.
These colleges, known as “FirstLink schools,” volunteered to be a part of the first of three waves to transition to the new system, with the rest of the 32 community and technical colleges in Washington to follow.
According to the Washington State Board of Community Colleges, ctcLink is a program that is intended to be a new, centralized system that gives students, faculty and staff a more efficient and updated manner of conducting their routine online college functions, such as registering for classes and accessing financial aid.
“Since the previous system was 30 years old, an update was inevitable,” said David O’Neill, the Chief Information Officer for CCS.
“It’s not like we had a choice,” O’Neill said. “We volunteered; we didn’t want to wait three years to be able to provide for our students. [The old system’s] day-to-day transactions were okay, but ultimately inefficient.”
The new system change has presented problems both foreseen and unforeseen by administration, but being one of the first schools to use the program allowed them to give input in the development of the new software.
“We have a voice in what’s being done, as opposed to being handed the finished project,” O’Neill said. “We want to be seen by our peers as unafraid to change.”
Administration was forced to weigh the cost-benefit of becoming the ctcLink guinea pigs.
“The reason you want to be the first is because you help design it,” said Janet Gullickson, SFCC President. “You get to say ‘well, that doesn’t work at our college this is the way we do business here, and this is the kind of procedure we want as part of the software.’”
The system was supposed to be ready August 2014, but has had multiple setbacks over the course of development.
“We’ve been in this for about two years now so we have had a lot of influence on how this was supposed to have been constructed,” Gullickson said.
The Problem
Through the time spent planning and preparing for ctcLink, there were areas in which problems were expected to occur, but few anticipated the extent of these problems.
“We knew going in that any time you do this there are many problems,” Gullickson said. “This is never a smooth thing; any time you try to change the way you have done business to a whole new way of doing business.
“For some reason, the state board didn’t recognize that we were a stand-alone college. For whatever reason, they believed that SCC covered us too, so many of our students were assigned to SCC. I was assigned to SCC.”
Students, staff and faculty alike have experienced the side-effects of the transition.
“It took days, first to figure out what went wrong, and secondly to fix it, and we are still fixing it,” Gullickson said. “Those are kinda the reasons of what went wrong. Most of the students affected early on, that’s been repaired. Those are students that did everything on time.”
The CIO, who was assigned to the project in the early stages, filled in what was expected of the software when it was purchased.
“The system has to be able to do six things: admit and register, award financial aid, disburse financial aid, collect tuition and fees, purchasing, and paying employees,” O’Neill said. “These are our core functions and most of those capabilities were not met.”
The Solution
Both SFCC and Tacoma are currently having problems disbursing financial aid. Tacoma is updating students daily via Facebook.
“What we’re trying to do right now is, in next couple of weeks, to get the packaging going,” Gullickson said. “Now, that’s not very comforting for those students who have been waiting for that money to make their rent or need that money for books.”
Because the delays continue, students will continue to experience technical difficulties.
“If we get enough help from the vendor of the software to help us fix the problems then it has to be cleared up by mid November, and I would hope that for most students it is cleared up by the end of October,” Gullickson said.
With these technical difficulties, there are things that students should keep in mind, according to President Gullickson.
“I do want to thank the students and the faculty for being so patient with us,” Gullickson said. “It’s not what we thought we bought and it’s been horrible for many people, especially our frontline people and our students.
“It’s really important for them to know that we understand we feel their pain we are working as hard as we can. Yelling at us doesn’t do much.”