What we do
Work in Progress: A Sampling of Current Projects
Judicial System
PeopleAdmintitle="">
Featured Project - Electronic Document Management
Selected Accomplishments
Electronic portfolios offer students a new dimension to their academic and professional careers. Presently, e-Portfolios are integral parts of our nationally-recognized Service Learning Program, our burgeoning Civic Leadership Program, and our ground-breaking Liberal Studies Major.
E-Portfolio functionality allows students to attach almost any kind of file (e.g. audio, video, text, spreadsheet, photo) and make it available to their adviser for comment. With this capacity, students may consider their co-curricular and curricular experiences in meaningful ways, reflect upon them, and use those reflections to develop as responsible leaders beyond the classroom.
Advisers provide feedback through e-Portfolio encouraging students to synthesize and integrate their experiences. Students may also share their portfolios with potential employers and others outside the Bentley community. MIS welcomes requests to enable e-portfolio technology in other academic, co-curricular, and professional programs. For additional information, contact Anne Pugliese.
FalconNet
One of the first of its kind in the nation, FalconNet is a new and exciting online networking resource available exclusively to Bentley students and alumni.
For students, it is a career networking site that enables them to leverage the professional knowledge and experience of their fellow students and alumni. They can build professional relationships, learn what internships and full-time jobs are like at organizations, join professional discussion groups, access links to popular career web sites, learn of upcoming career events, prepare for interviews by learning the types of questions companies ask in interviews, and more.
For alumni, it is an online community of more than 45,000 Bentley alumni who can now network with each other both socially and professionally. They can use FalconNet to find people using a Google-like alumni search engine, upload resumes, search job postings, post personal and professional updates for Class Notes, create and participate in discussion groups, invite people to be part of their alumni network, opt in to sharing career advice with Bentley students, and more.
This project was an eight month endeavor that involved the MIS Technology Deployment and Integration, Career Services, Alumni and Development, Marketing and Communications departments as well as Harris Interactive, our current Alumni Community vendor. Completed August 2007. For additional information contact Patty Patria.
Bentley’s community of faculty, staff and students may now place Classified Ads using Harry’s List. This web-based system allows Bentley community members to create postings and categorize them for easy searching. Subscribers receive a daily email of new postings. Our active community posts an average of 10 items per day!
Harry’s List is accessible to all via a link on MyBentley and replaces BNews. Completed 8/2007. For additional information contact, Anne Pugliese.
Java Development Platform - AppSched
MIS is committed to a multi-year effort to establish Java as Bentley’s second programming platform because Java promises easier programming, development, deployment and updates to software applications and enables Bentley to undertake advanced web applications and handle the flexibility and openness of current and emerging software.The latest Java project was a rewrite of Lotus Notes tutor scheduling application as a web-based Java application with expanded functionality.
With this new application, both staff and students benefit from the ease of usability. Staff may view an entire week of appointments at a time and manage tutor availability and student appointments. Students may see all available tutors and timeslots for a selected week and reserve their own appointments. They may also leave notes for tutors and cancel an appointment. Automated emails go out each evening reminding students of appointments the next day.
The new scheduling calendar for The Writing Center was launched in February. This fall 2007, the ESOL will move its scheduling to this new application. This process is expandable and can easily be adapted for departments other than ESOL and the Writing Center.
Previously reported accomplishments in Java included in-house developed Java forms integrated with the Serena Collage web content management system, making use of Java in several third party software applications like Datastream, and converting Lotus Notes applications in support of Bentley’s switch from Notes to Exchange. Completed summer 2007. For additional information, contact Mardis Dunton.
Work in Progress - A Sampling of Current Projects
This project will replace an aging Judicial System that has served Bentley for over 10 years but is in serious need of updating.
Written in-house, this new software application will provide our Student Affairs Division with an efficient, customized, easy-to-use system for tracking the processing of student violations of campus policies. Students will be able to monitor their case via MyBentley.
The groups and departments, including Campus Police, who participate in the judicial process will be involved in this update. Anticipated completion the end of the fall term. For additional information, contact Anne Pugliese.
PeopleAdmin
PeopleAdmin is a fully-automated employment applicant tracking system. Job applicants to Bentley for both faculty and staff positions will be able to use this web-based system to create their employment profile and apply for jobs. Our Human Resources staff will be able to review applications on-line including any attachments provided by an applicant.Workflow, included among the system’s many features, will eliminate paper-shuffle and ensure that proper authorizations are received as we move through a job posting, job search and eventual position hire. Applicants will create their own accounts enabling them to monitor the status of their application. Anticipated completion October 2007. For additional information, contact Anne Pugliese.
Featured Project - Electronic Document Management
It’s not business as usual in the Financial Aid Department. They are transforming the processing of financial aid applications with a document imaging and workflow system. The system promises efficient, streamlined processing of applications and improved customer service. It is Bentley’s first venture into this type of electronic document management, and it may revolutionize how we process applications well as other document-centric work.
Financial Aid is a paper intensive department where aid applications contain many documents, with some totaling as much as 80 pages. Staff members need to share the same documents and files in order to do their portion of the aid determination process and either make copies or transfer files from worker to worker. There is always the possibility that files may be misplaced which, according to Gartner Research, 25% of enterprise documents are misfiled and inaccessible. At the end of this paper chase is a student anxiously awaiting news on his/her financial aid situation.
According to Donna Kendall, the Executive Director of Enrollment Management and Financial Aid, the department receives about 1600 incoming aid applications. Each may have as many as 10 documents. The average turnaround time to manually process an application is two weeks.
Last spring, Bentley chose Perceptive’s ImageNow document management product because it addresses document management of inbound paper and electronic documents that have been received by mail and scanned or imported electronically. It features document image capture, indexing, storage, retrieval, display and distribution and includes integrated workflow software that provides easily implemented automation of document-centric work processes.
The system has been up and running since July. The transition from paper to electronic documents has required the scanning of each student folder. For starters, the department has focused its efforts on the freshmen class. As more and more applications are entered into the system, the piles of files dwindle, as staff uses the shared electronic versions.
While it’s still early, they couldn’t be more pleased. Kelly Baran, the department’s Associate Director, believes, “It will have a huge impact on the office.”
She sees that document management facilitates the electronic storing and sharing of documents, speeds up and streamlines paper-intensive processes and cuts down on having to manually pull files. Her staff can keep track of what work has been done on a file because they can make comments and notations directly onto the electronic document that other staff can reference in the course of processing a financial aid request.
By the end of the fall semester, she expects improved customer service with reduced turnaround time in processing applications as well as staff who are better able to handle inquiries because they will have information right at their fingertips. They will be able to view critical data contained within the Banner financial aid systems at the same time that they are viewing digitized versions of tax returns and other formerly “paper” documents critical to determining eligibility and packaging awards.
Expect document management to become an epidemic, as other offices jockey to start their own project. This is a multi-year project leading to campus-wide adoption. For additional information, contact Gwen Kreager.
