St. Vincent’s College has been awarded a five-year technology grant.  This $1.2 million in-kind grant has been provided by The Campus EAI Consortium through the myCampus On Demand Portal Grant Program, a non-profit provider of information technology services headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio.

    The announcement was made by Anjli Jain Chopra, Executive Director of Campus EAI Consortium and Martha Shouldis, Ed.D., President of St. Vincent’s College. St. Vincent’s is pleased to announce the selection of Campus EAI Consortium’s myCampus, a Software-as-a-Service Web 2.0 campus portal solution that will provide students, faculty and staff with access to their academic and social information all in one place

    The grant is designed to cover the costs of software, hardware and services associated with the integration of all information technology at the College including online learning, administrative computing and the student services system.

    “The grant will enable the College to achieve our strategic initiatives in Information Technology, many of which would not be possible with our existing level of resources. In addition to helping us adopt the latest technology, the grant will make the College much more customer friendly for our students” said Dr. Shouldis.

    Dr. Shouldis said the new system will put students “just a click away” from vital services and information they need to succeed in school and as healthcare professionals. Implementation of the new platform will begin this summer.

    She said St. Vincent’s was selected for the grant because it is a small college that has already made technology innovations and works in partnership with other higher education institutions and consortiums. As a subsidiary of St. Vincent’s Medical Center it also works with the Ascension Health System’s Information Services in conjunction with the Medical Center.

     The grant includes project management, installation, hosting, managed services and training costs necessary to install and operate an enterprise Portal solution.

     “Essentially the feature-rich web portal will allow St. Vincent’ College to offer multiple systems and services through a single point of access.  In organizing the diversity of resources through Campus EAI we will have the opportunity to enhance both our technology and the quality of service.  The Portal will provide all members of the campus community with a single sign-on to integrated teaching and learning interests, student services and extra-curricular parts of campus life,” said Janice N. Faye, Director of Administrative Services. “By integrating information technology, we can better serve the needs of the college community both on and off campus.”

   Faye said the grant will also enhance the College’s online learning and distance education programs, email system, student-based web publishing, wireless and ecommerce initiatives and the college website along with campus security and emergency preparedness by better connecting faculty, students and staff.

   “We’ve made considerable strides in many of these areas in the past couple of years, but the grant will accelerate our advances and tie the entire system together,” Faye said, who added the system will be tied together through the implementation of an  internet/intranet portal.

   Faye said the grant will enable the college to consolidate multiple systems and secure sign-ons into a new user-friendly system “that offers students a broader range of programs and services and makes the college more competitive in the marketplace.”

     The CampusEAI Consortium was created in 2003 as a response to increasing IT budget cuts, resource constraints and needs of incoming Internet-savvy students. Now numbering more than 250 institutions world wide, it began with 14 institutions including Case Western Reserve University, University of Montana, Rochester Institute of Technology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Oklahoma State University. Current members are representative of K-12, higher education, government, and corporate members and clients representing 10 countries including the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom.  Members now include Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of Exeter, University of Melbourne, McGill University, Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), California State University-Los Angeles, Boston College, Merced Community College District, Loyola Marymount University, the University of Montana, Imperial College, and The Hong Kong Institute of Education. Its mission is to help members reduce the time, cost and effort associated with implementing enterprise IT solutions.  The Consortium also facilitates collaboration amongst member institution for the purpose of sharing, developing and distributing community-source software.