The Hub, as we have known it for over a decade, will hit its end-of-life in December 2021 as a result of changes by our vendor. Over the next three years, we will be moving the Hub to new technology. We’ve given this migration a name: Hub2021. In the last newsletter, we introduced the Hub2021 process and described the first round of changes that happened for our students and their parents in January 2019. The migration to new proxy/parent Hub functionality generally went smoothly, with a couple of bumps along the way during the rollout. We are now in a good place, with our students and their parents/proxies successfully using the new environment.
Change that Matters
When you have had a system like the Hub in place for many years, and begin to plot a move to a more modern environment, you expect change. It isn’t always clear what that change will look like, but you know it will exist. For our first round of migrations, a lot of that change was experienced in the offices that interact with parents/proxys, such as the Business Office and Student Financial Services. To imagine changing a process that has been in place for so many years is not an easy thing. And if it’s a process that is crucial to the success of our students, it’s even more challenging. In this case, the improved student and parent experience made the change a worthy effort.
From Mike Kotchevar in Student Financial Services: “All during the implementation, we knew the new Hub screens would be more accessible, clear, and visually pleasing than what we’ve had in the past. We believe the financial aid checklist alone will help our families to navigate the financial aid process with clear visual clues as to what they need to do next.”
Vendors Change and So Should We
In addition to the challenge of adjusting to change, we have experienced the challenge of moving to vendor-provided software, free of local customizations. Moving to this methodology will allow us to move into the future, and continue to move nimbly as the years progress. A look at technologies that we use in our personal lives, such as Google, reflects this new type of development and rate of change. Vendors develop software for many institutions, and for us to move to this technology and still keep what is essential and unique to Carleton will be an ongoing challenge for each of our upcoming projects.
From Linda Thornton in the Business Office: “We’re excited to be in a place with our technology vendor partner, Ellucian, where our technology is fully supported and positioned for vendor supported enhancements without the need for expensive customization. Our ability to share information about student accounts with the Student Financial Services Office also took a huge step forward making it easier for us to communicate between departments. We consider this to be a Win, Win, Win initiative: more efficient technology, better experience for families and better communication for Carleton.”
Feedback
With such change, we are, of course, eager to know what our students and parents think of the new system. A post-project survey of students who volunteered to help with testing shows 100% satisfaction with the new Hub functionality and modern interface. With the first round of Hub2021 in production, we are planning the remainder of the project. There are 96 individual links in the Hub, so we have our work cut out for us migrating all of those processes! You can expect several rounds of updates each year for the next three years. Please know that we are always looking for feedback and suggestions. If you are a student, you can feel free to send me your thoughts on the process, the communication, and the new functionality.