The Kaskaskia College Board Monday night approved an update of its Ellucian Software System.
Chief Information Officer George Kriss says the upgrade will cost $3,141,121 over the next five years including annual fees and $1,127,057 in the first year.
“This will allow all the servers and software not to be on campus, but up in the cloud. And this will help especially security wise where we don’t have to worry about our disaster recovery and our backups, we can let the experts at Amazon Web Services take care of all of that. So many other colleges have been in the news, like Lewis & Clark, that have been ransom wared and hacked, and that’s one less thing we will have to worry about with this security on campus.”
Kriss says among other things the Ellucian System stores everything related to students from registration, to grades, to graduation. The college will be able to utilize $614,000 in federal stimulus funds to help pay for the upgrade.
The college board also approved the use of $28,549 in Title 3 funds to purchase Smart Podiums and Elmo Document Cameras for some of the classrooms not included in the current building renovation. The equipment will allow faculty more flexibility in teaching including digitizing complex formulas and having the availability to place notes on slides.
In personnel matters, the board approved the hire of Crystal Donoho as the new director of the Children’s Learning Center. Lauren Myers was promoted to Director of Institutional Effectiveness, effective September 1, 2022. She currently works as the college’s Information Technology Business Analyst and is a KC alumna.
The Salem Education Center Coordinator position was increased from a 30 to 40-hour position. Andrea Shipley was recently named to the position.
The board approved the new position of a KC Pathway to Healthcare Careers Grant Nursing Program Success Coach, which will be a 100% grant-funded position as a part of the Illinois Community College Board’s funding of the Pipeline for Advancement of Healthcare Workforce (PATH) Grant, contingent upon grant approval. Additionally, a restructure of a vacant position was approved to become the Healthcare Career Grant Coordinator and Allied Health Office Assistant position, contingent upon the PATH grant approval. This position was approved to attract a broader candidate pool and support essential office operations.
The board also accepted the resignation of Pamela Smith – Children’s Learning Center Director.
