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Transition to the future

Moore’s law says that computing power doubles approximately every two years.

The Shoreline Community College ctcLink team members are (from right): Stuart Trippel, Chris Melton, Jennifer Fenske, Gavin Smith, Stephen Will, Ted Haase and Gary Kalbfleisch (not pictured).

Making waves Because the ctcLink project is so fundamental, implementation will occur in waves. The beta testers,  FirstLink colleges, are the Spokane campuses and Tacoma Community College. They are working now to go live in August, 2014. After that, the schedule is:   Wave 1 – Go Live: May 2015 Columbia Basin, Pierce, Green River, Grays Harbor, Lower Columbia, Peninsula, Clark Wave 2 – Go Live: February 2016 Shoreline, Renton, Cascadia, Lake Washington, Big Bend, Highline, SBCTC, Edmonds, Olympic Wave 3 – Go Live: October 2016 Bellevue, Walla Walla, Wenatchee, Yakima, Everett, Skagit, Whatcom, Bellingham Wave 4 – Go Live: June 2017 Clover Park, Bates, Seattle, Centralia, South Puget Sound

As most employees of Washington’s community and technical colleges know, the system has flaunted that law not

just once or twice, but by a factor of 15. However, there’s a new sheriff in town called ctcLink and it will be coming to Shoreline in 2015-16.

“This is not just an IT project. ctcLink is a complete reworking of our business process that comes with a significant technology upgrade,” said Stuart Trippel, the local on-campus team leader for the statewide initiative that will eventually impact all community and technical colleges.

“This is the beginning of the end of the end for the HP 3000," Trippel said of the system’s antiquated, 30-year-old HP 3000 computer system.

ctcLink is centralized system of online functions to give students, faculty and staff anytime, anywhere access to a modern, efficient way of doing college business. Shoreline and the other colleges will align core business processes, making for streamlined, standardized practices across the 34-college system.

"ctcLink will be a big change. We need to acknowledge that and starting preparing now for February, 2016,” Trippel said. "Our first step will be a series of brown-bag meetings this spring to introduce ctcLink and outline what will happen and when it will happen."

Ciber is the company behind ctcLink. The firm was chosen after a comprehensive Request for Proposal (RFP) and vendor evaluation process from April-August 2012, followed by two months of in-depth contract negotiations. Ciber began working in February 2013with staff from the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges.

Ciber is a systems integration company. In the case of ctcLink, Ciber’s winning proposal is built on PeopleSoft. PeopleSoft provides a variety of system services, including human resources, financial, supply chain, enterprise performance and student administration.