College and SBCTC ctcLink Teams Out in Front at Northwest HEUG Conference

The Community Colleges of Spokane and the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) sent a strong contingent of presenters to the Northwest Regional Higher Education User Group (NWHEUG) conference, August 5-6 at the Centennial Hotel in Spokane.

HEUG — pronounced “hug” — is an international organization comprising all levels of higher education that use Oracle applications and technology, including PeopleSoft. The Northwest region includes Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming.

Making the Conference a Success

Washington community and technical college ctcLink PeopleSoft users supported their professional colleagues, both by sharing knowledge and skills in workshop sessions, as well as in key roles on the conference planning committee.

Committee members

• Sheri Carroll, Spokane Community College manager of student entry, chaired the conference Admissions track.
• Kelly Forsberg, ctcLink functional trainer for Financial Aid, chaired the conference Communication team.
• Cielito Lane, SBCTC functional analyst for Campus Solutions, chaired the Student Records track.
• Paula McDaniel, SBCTC functional analyst for Reporting/Business Intelligence, served as Reporting and Business Intelligence (RBI) track chair.

Presenters

• Chantel Black, Spokane Community College director of admissions and registration, shared “How Do Students Know to Do That?” giving an overview of Spokane’s student communication strategy and features using PeopleSoft 3Cs, Message Center and texting platform.
• Sheri Carroll, Spokane Community College manager of student entry, hosted “Admissions Birds of a Feather,” gathering the Admissions track interest group to discuss questions, ideas, concerns and possibilities for the module.
• Kris Christensen, Spokane Community College testing center manager, shared “Data Strategies for Alternative Placement Measures,” discussing the use of PeopleSoft test score data fields to code complex alternative placement measures, including a multiple measures math placement pilot project based on several districts’ high school transcripts.
• Sindie Howland, Spokane Falls Community College director of admissions and registration, presented “Serving Students from Matriculation to Term,” providing an overview of admissions from matriculation to term activation, plus ways to increase efficiency and better serve students.
• Cielito Lane, SBCTC functional analyst for Campus Solutions, hosted “Student Records Birds of a Feather,” a Student Records track interest group gathering to discuss questions, ideas, concerns and hopes for the module.
• Irena Marinova, SBCTC functional analyst for Human Capital Management, presented “Resolving Payroll Issues – Lessons Learned,” sharing lessons learned while troubleshooting payroll issues in production as part of SBCTC’s ERP Support team.
• Melody Matthews, Community Colleges of Spokane human resources information systems director, presented “The Power of Position Management,” sharing considerations before and during implementing the Position Management tool and the data analytics it provides.
• Paula McDaniel, SBCTC functional analyst for reporting/business intelligence (RBI), also drove in the most runs, presenting three sessions, in addition to serving on the planning committee:
  • “Cool Prompts” showed how to create a basic prompt and a hands-on demo of how to write a variety of prompts, including Yes/No Table, Translate Table, and Group Multiple Optional.
  • “Understanding Subqueries for People Who Don't Code” presented when, where and how to write subqueries and, most importantly, WHY to use them.
  • “RBI Birds of a Feather” gathering the RBI track interest group to discuss to questions, ideas, concerns, and hopes for their module.
• Barbara Rissmann, Spokane Community College associate registrar, presented “Personalizing your PeopleSoft Space,” offering tips to set up user preferences to personalize pages and page sections in PeopleSoft.
• Ana Ybarra, SBCTC Campus Solutions interim associate director, and Cielito Lane, SBCTC functional analyst for Campus Solutions, stepped up and replaced the original presenter of "National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) Enrollment Reporting/Error Corrections" at the last moment. They shared one of our college’s experiences using custom queries to catch missing or inaccurate data before running and sending the NSC report and held an interactive discussion for participants to share their campus’ methods, tips and tricks.

Photo: Irena Marinova presents at the Northwest Region Higher Education User Group conference.