Due to student body growth, increased efficiencies proved necessary for Santa Barbara City College. Blackboard Transact™ answered this need by integrating with Santa Barbara City College’s ERP and student information system and the results were astounding.
Throughout its 100-year history, Santa Barbara City College (SBCC) has seen its share of change. As the college evolved from serving as the 13th and 14th grades of the Santa Barbara school district in 1909, to the bustling educational epicenter of the community that it is today, the community college has a long history of responding to demands of an increasing enrollment.
Accommodating a growing campus and increasing enrollment takes vision, resource planning, and commitment to change. In 2007, officials at the sprawling 72-acre campus that hugs the famously picturesque Santa Barbara coastline embarked on a mission to invest in a new student information system (SIS). Recognizing that managing student data is key to helping the campus run more efficiently, the transition was made to SunGard’s Banner®. Simultaneously, the campus bookstore was looking for a debit card system that was less labor and time intensive, and, the Campus Food Service Group was on the hunt for a new point of sales (POS) system. Meanwhile, there was a growing frustration with managing secure building access.
Convergence of Needs Demands Integrated Solution
These multiple needs throughout campus motivated SBCC to find an integrated solution that would meet the requirements of each department while integrating seamlessly with the newly adopted Banner SIS. That’s when SBCC’s IT team stepped in and recommended Blackboard Transact. After reviewing multiple vendors, SBCC selected the only provider that could do everything they needed – Blackboard Transact. The two-phase rollout began the summer of 2007. Phase one included: ID card integration with Banner; Campus Dining POS implementation; stored value debit for the bookstore, vending and copy machine reader installation, and the introduction of Web deposits. Since SBCC uses Banner as their ERP system, as well as their SIS, Blackboard Transact had an immediate impact on staff and faculty efficiency.
The Benefits of Cashless: From Beverages to Transportation
Once integrated, Blackboard Transact gave students and faculty/staff immediate cashless conveniences throughout campus. Campus ID cards are now accepted as payment at dining facilities, the bookstore, vending machines, and at the copy and print machines on campus. While some accounts are restricted to just bookstore or dining, depending on what parents and/or students designate, some choose to put their funds in a Flex Account, giving students the ability to use their cards for commerce anywhere on campus, and in the case of the college’s Van Share program, off campus too.
To help mitigate a long–standing parking problem on campus, the college instituted a Van Share program providing services to the cities of Ojai, Ventura, and Santa Maria. Recognizing another way to leverage the Blackboard Transact platform, the college built an integration with Sequoia™ wireless readers to accept payment from riders participating in the college’s Van Share program. With real estate in Santa Barbara being some of the most expensive in the nation, many of the college’s students live elsewhere – some as far as 25 miles out in neighboring communities such as Oxnard, Lompoc, Ventura and Ojai. The wireless readers make it easy for riders to jump on board, swipe their campus ID cards and go – without worrying about having ready-cash to pay for the Van Share, and without pre-purchasing tickets as was done in the past.
Parents Love Directing Where Their Money Goes
When IT Director, Paul Bishop, started receiving parent phone calls telling him that they loved him, he knew something was going very right. Blackboard’s Web deposit functionality at SBCC allows parents to make deposits online to their student’s campus account. Parents simply use the guest deposit feature to add a stored value onto their student’s campus account. Parents can then specify where students can spend their money on campus. Real-time deposits allow parents to provide funds as soon as possible and for the students to access those funds quickly. "Web deposits are extremely popular with parents especially. With an easy-to-understand interface, parents and others can simply add value to the account in real time. We truly make parents’ lives easier, especially with today’s reality of parents sometimes living in separate places. Typically, they don’t want to give students a credit card," said Bishop. "I’ve had parents say they love me since they can add money to the card and know where it is going. They know it’s not going to the local pub. It is integrated to the portal so all they need to do is click to deposit. It is so easy to do!"
Phase 2: Wireless Access Improves Security and Sanity
Two years after Phase One was completed, SBCC implemented Phase 2, which added access control capabilities, satisfying yet another need of the growing campus. According to Bishop, "We definitely had a dysfunctional key system here. No one had any idea who had keys to what. We had a lot of master keys circulating about, so the Security Department began researching a system to allow card entry to buildings to manage and control the key system. When I heard about it, I told them (the Security Department) that there was a piece in Blackboard Transact that does just that, so rather than creating yet another database with faculty, staff, etc., why don’t we use the current system that’s already integrated with our ERP?" Paul easily convinced the Security team once they realized that the existing Blackboard integration was not only going to be the easiest to implement, but the most effective.
In fact, all that was needed was to install the door modules, add a few controllers and radios and pay for the module license. Bishop said that since there was minimal training involved, they were able to quickly begin conducting a pilot project in the administration building. Once successfully completed, plans were put in place to add keyless exterior door entry as a part of every new renovation on campus. In addition to the Admin Building, the Occupational Education Building, and the Press Box Conference Facility now boast keyless access. The goal is to have all exterior doors keyless within the next 10 years.
"Historically, employees have carried around hundreds of keys - most of them they inherited from people retiring or leaving. It was not unusual to have to try 20 keys to see which one worked!" Plus, Bishop noted that, since there was no key tracking system, no one knew who had what keys, so they ended up using lock changes as a way to manage security to the building. And, as Bishop said, "That’s an expensive way to manage your access, especially when that only propagates the problem by adding more keys to the mix. Now with Blackboard Transact, we can see who has access. We can look at a door report to see who has been in the area. It makes key management simple."
As time went on, the Security team also found that the new campus card system proved to be a great way to locate students on campus. They use it to match up pictures of students if parents call to get emergency messages to students. Conversely, it is also handy in identifying students that may need to be escorted off campus or who may require other disciplinary action.
Beating Benchmarks for Progress
From the start, the community college’s IT team set a goal to increase campus card usage to ensure they were making progress with the new system; a benchmark goal was set to increase campus card usage by 20% in 3 years. To their delight and surprise, usage increased by 120% in just one year once Blackboard Transact was implemented.
And that increase didn’t just come from students. Staff, too, embraced the new and multiple uses of the campus ID card, including the creative incentives SBCC offered to encourage use. Not many staff members passed up the opportunity of saving 5% when SBCC Campus Dining offered an incentive to staff and faculty if they used their campus card at the main café. Soon, SBCC staff was able to use their cards (and enjoy discounts) beyond the main dining facility, as the program expanded to include the snack bars and coffee carts. Today over 1/3 of faculty, staff, and students use their campus cards for dining, etc.
Growth continues to be the cornerstone of Santa Barbara City College, as evidenced by a doubling in enrollment each year during the past three years. The campus is now, however, better prepared as they enjoy one integrated solution that provides a truly convenient cashless campus and enhanced keyless entry. Immediately, SBCC reaped tremendous time-savings for staff and improved delivery of services to students, faculty and staff - all of which paves the way for another hundred years-plus of serving the educational needs of the Santa Barbara community.