Information Technology & Innovation

Our student information system (Banner) is now in the Ellucian Cloud!

As part of the Banner Modernization and Standardization project initiated by the CSCU Board of Regents and the System office, WCSU completed an important first step in realizing our shared goal of providing a state of the art and modern student information system to our students, faculty and staff. On January 8th, 2018, after months of planning and testing, our Banner system was successfully migrated to the Ellucian Cloud, powered by AWS (Amazon Web Services).  This was a team effort made possible by the strong partnership between our Information Technology & Innovation department, Enrollment Management, Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, Finance, WCSU faculty as well as the BOR System Office and Ellucian staff.

The project will be delivered in three phases:

Phase 1: Move Banner to the Ellucian Cloud. This first step, which was completed on January 8th, 2018 involved moving WCSU’s Banner system, which was previously hosted on-premise at our campus data center to the Ellucian Cloud, powered by Amazon Web Services (AMS). The benefits include a more resilient, secure and hardened hosting environment while at the same time supports a consistent disaster recovery capability across the CSCU system. We will also be better positioned to take advantage of the Ellucian Ethos Platform which will provide the underlying services to support the Modernization phase, allowing integration and extensibility to the Banner platform without the need for extensive customizations.

Phase 2: Modernization. This next step which is now underway will include the shift to Banner 9, the latest software version, which provides an improved user experience as well as more flexibility to ‘extend’ Banner’s capabilities rather than having to customize the code. Implementation of newly licensed products such as Ellucian Mobile, Enterprise Content Management – ECM (document imaging, management and workflow) and identity management (authorization provisioning / deprovisioning) are planned to be implemented over the next several years.

Phase 3: Standardization. The goal here is to use ‘baseline Banner 9’ functionality consistently across the CSCU system wherever possible, replacing the individually ‘customized’ processes that each university/college has put in place. Over time, the list of these customizations has grown quite lengthy. Adopting the Banner 9 functionality will allow us to realize a consistent process for admitting, registering, providing financial aid, advising, etc. across the CSCU system while staying current with Banner release levels that enable continuous improvements and new capabilities. In addition to standardizing process, there will also be a system-wide Data Standards Committee, being led by the Institutional Research group, that will be assessing areas for data standardization to facilitate CSCU wide, comprehensive reporting.

Please contact Julianne at Johnson johnsonj@wcsu.educreate new email for further details or questions.