Meeting the Needs of a Global Student Body -Park University

Park University, a private institution based in Parkville, Missouri, has become a pioneer in using innovative learning approaches to meet the diverse needs of a rapidly-expanding student population. The campus in Parkville, Missouri is home to 1,500 students in the University’s traditional liberal arts, four-year coeducational program. Another 1,500 students participate in the University’s non-traditional evening and weekend program.

What makes Park University unique is its 41 campus centers across the United States and its distance learning programs, offered online to students throughout the world. Together these programs provide opportunities for education to more than 22,000 students—and 60 percent of those students are on active military duty today.

Providing responsive technology services while growing from a student body of 1,500 to a 41-campus national institution during the past seven years has been a challenge for Sara Freeman, Director of Information Technology Services. According to Ms. Freeman, it is crucial that the same high level of services be provided to all students and staff, wherever they are. “With our ‘One University’ approach, we think of Parkville as just another Campus Center,” the Director says. “All of our administrators and all of our faculty, wherever they may be, are instrumental to our students’ learning experience, and deserve the same level of support.”

Central to the IT structure throughout this dramatic growth has been Jenzabar CX. Jenzabar CX is Jenzabar’s next-generation Java®-based enterprise software system, a foundation with an extremely powerful infrastructure that utilizes a middle-layer application server for a multi-tiered configuration. At Park University, the system is used to manage Admissions data, Registrar functions, Financial Aid, and Accounting for all Campus Centers.

To support all the Centers, the University implemented a Jenzabar portal solution and named it the Online Park Enrollment Network (OPEN). Based on Jenzabar’s Internet Campus Solution™, OPEN allows students to register for classes, check grades, check account balances, pay via credit card, run a degree audit, and view their transcripts. The faculty uses OPEN for registering students, advising, managing grades, and submitting attendance information.

Now the program has been expanded into every area of the University, including academic offices, Accounting, and Human Resources. Every document that comes to the University is scanned and classified. If that document type has a work queue, it is forwarded electronically to each person who has to act on it in turn, until it is completed and placed in a repository.

Administrators can easily find any document related to a student throughout each student’s lifecycle, from the time students apply to the University to the time they make contributions as alumni. All document management is very closely tied to the Jenzabar system. An administrator working in the Jenzabar CX system can press one key and view all the associated documents. Transcripts and other documents are accessible to all campus centers simultaneously, eliminating mail delays and lost paperwork.

“We are about as close to being a paperless operation as possible,” Ms. Freeman explains. “This has resulted in faster, more accurate administration and higher student satisfaction. The scalability of the Jenzabar software that has enabled us to grow like this is simply amazing,” she adds. “We take our system up-time and availability very seriously. We grew the University on Jenzabar and we run the University on Jenzabar. It is the center of all our IT services.”

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