Successes - Austin Community College
College Expands with Fortis and is Instrumental in the Success of the Virtual College of Texas

Austin Community College District (ACC) is among the country's largest school of this type offering 235 associate degree and certificate programs, university transfer courses, workforce training, adult education, and continuing education opportunities for personal enrichment. ACC is serving 44,000 credit students this year compared with 40,248 in fall 2009, an increase of nearly 10 percent. ACC also serves 10,500 continuing education and 3,000 adult education students. Founded in 1973, ACC is a primary gateway to higher education and training for Central Texans. Founded in 1973, ACC has evolved into the primary gateway to higher education and training for Central Texans.

As an educational institute, ACC must comply with various record keeping regulations, including the Texas Public Information Act and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) which governs how student records need to be stored, retained and secured for privacy.

Overview of Fortis at ACC
ACC first adopted the Fortis document management solution in 1998 to replace their microfilm system as a more efficient and flexible method to manage records. The initial implementation proved to be an effective online resource that connected their satellite campuses and improved access to student files for past, current and future students. Counselors, advisors, Admissions and Early College Start staff now rely on Fortis to obtain transcripts and other enrollment information for students.

Following the success in managing student records, ACC began implementation of Fortis throughout the college in the Financial Aid department, Human Resources - Payroll, and Facilities and Construction. Within the next year, Business Services and other departments will likely have their own document repositories through Fortis. With implementations throughout the college, ACC’s document management solution has improved administrative processes so that the college can better serve its students.

Thinking beyond departmental applications of Fortis, ACC decided to expand on their success with Fortis by housing faculty credential files for the Virtual College of Texas (VCT). The VCT is a collaborative effort amongst nearly 40 public two-year colleges to facilitate sharing of distance learning courses among member colleges. All faculty credential files for each member college are stored in Fortis for access by host colleges and most recently by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) during their accreditation review.

With more than 350 users accessing the system, Fortis has become a mission-critical application for ACC.

Solutions across ACC and the Virtual College of Texas

Student Records
ACC’s initial implementation of Fortis began in 1998 as the college was faced with the challenge of managing millions of pages of student records, including: state residency forms, applications, international documents, high school transcripts and other college transcripts.

Challenge
The Admissions and Records department maintains information on all current and inactive students. This complete repository of student records includes students enrolled from 1973 to the present.

With student records from 1973 through 1992 on microfilm and in paper format, sharing information across campuses as well as departments became a tedious and labor-intensive process.

Solution
Originally maintaining records in their microfilm system until 1992, ACC knew the flexibility in modifying a record was just not available with microfilm and eagerly switched to Fortis. In March 2006, ACC completed its conversion of student records from microfilm to the Fortis system.

The microfilm conversion coupled with the completion of the backfile paper conversion allowed the department to achieve a centralized file system for student records. The elimination of tedious manual processes such as copying, retrieving, faxing and re-filing of records paved the way for administration to re-direct staff efforts to more critical student-related functions.

Fortis provides the staff with confidence that they are complying with FERPA and the State of Texas requirements for recordkeeping. Not to mention that administrators no longer need to spend tedious amounts of time to access a file by phone or fax. With Web-based access to the system, administrators can log on to view and modify records, annotate documents and add files.

Financial Aid
For new students who enroll at ACC as well as current students, the Financial Aid office must annually review and process documentation for each student, including student verification forms and if the student is a dependent, a parent verification form. These forms contain sensitive financial information and often require further research to verify accuracy.

Challenge
The Financial Aid office processes more than 22,000 financial aid applications annually and awards over $44 million each year in various forms of aid. Financial Aid staff must handle large volumes of documents in a fixed time period, while ensuring security of personal financial information.

The manual process of handling the financial aid applications involved travel to a storage location to retrieve information, so the manual processing was both inefficient and time consuming.

Because of these challenges, Financial Aid Specialists were not able to immediately share information regarding a student’s application or verify student responses to financial aid questions with the supporting data and documentation.

Solution
By implementing Fortis, Financial Aid Specialists are able to verify information in a timely manner, which has sped up the time for granting an award. Now all incoming financial aid applications and correspondence are scanned into the Fortis system and available online for query and retrieval.

“We now are able to make decisions in half the time from the time we receive the completed application until we mail the award letter. We attribute this efficiency to the increased accessibility of the files along with improved filing and classification of records,” said Terry Bazan, Director of Financial Aid.

Financial Aid Specialists can remotely access applications, which provides better flexibility in handling new information and an improved workflow. Applications can be processed in shorter times and personal financial information is safeguarded with the multiple security levels in Fortis.

Business Services
The Business Services department comprises many administrative functions within ACC, including Purchasing, Finance and Budget, Facilities and Construction, Building and Grounds, Environmental Health and Safety, Accounts Payable, Cashiers, Student and Restricted Accounting. The Facilities and Construction unit has implemented Fortis, while other areas of the Business Services department have plans for implementation of Fortis in the fall of 2007.

Challenge
The main imperatives for seeking an electronic repository for documents used by the many areas of the Business Services department are 1) space constraints with many lateral filing cabinets using prime office real estate, 2) accessibility of documents by different sub-departments within Business Services and 3) limitations of indexing paper files.

Additionally, the Facilities and Construction unit maintained old blueprints and plans for building construction since the college was founded more than 30 years ago. As new buildings were constructed to meet the rapid growth of the college, Facilities needed a secure method for protecting and storing the blueprints.

Solution
The Facilities and Construction unit contracted DAT Solutions LP to convert the construction plans and blueprints to electronic images and import into Fortis along with index data. The process was seamless – resulting in important historical documents safeguarded in Fortis and records accessible to staff from remote areas.

“We needed a way to preserve and maintain the integrity of the blueprints and other construction plans while increasing the flexibility and response time in retrieving these records in time critical situations,” said Bill Mullane, Director of Facilities and Construction.

Other Business Services areas will begin to move their files, including non-negotiable records and journal entries, invoices, and reports, among others, into the Fortis repository. The benefits include online access to documents, increased productivity and efficiency and the ability to easily share information amongst the many Business Services areas. As more records are moved into the electronic repository, Business Services is solving their storage space problem and can put their office space to more productive use.

Virtual College of Texas and Fortis
Austin Community College is one of nearly 40 public two-year colleges to participate in the Virtual College of Texas (VCT). The VCT is a collaborative effort to share distance learning courses among member colleges. With the VCT, Texas students have access to a statewide, online distance learning course schedule and may enroll at their home colleges to take courses that are not locally available. Over 40,000 course enrollments have taken place in VCT-facilitated courses since VCT became operational in the fall semester of 1998.

ACC plays a vital role in the VCT by housing credential files of faculty teaching VCT-facilitated courses via the Fortis system. Access to this credential information by VCT member colleges is essential. To meet standards of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), the accreditation body of higher education institutions in the South, each college must confirm for itself that faculty meet local requirements plus those of SACS and as applicable, professional accrediting bodies.

With Fortis, administrators at any VCT-participating college can query for documents such as transcripts, work experience and other official accreditation documentation.

According to Ron Thomson, Director of VCT, “With credential files maintained in Fortis, personnel from various locations can conveniently access information that would be a formidable challenge if it were not available online. In pragmatic terms, VCT would not be possible without a central electronic repository of faculty credentials. The service provided by Fortis has been vital to VCT member colleges’ ability to meet accreditation requirements.”

The initial implementation for student records at Austin Community College provided an efficient solution for accessing files, meeting various compliance requirements and improving business processes. ACC has grown its document management system from one major functional area to various areas throughout the college, and has implemented Fortis to support the initiatives of the Virtual College of Texas. The college has seen the benefits of its document management solution and plans additional applications in other departments. By expanding Fortis institution wide and supporting outside programs, the staff at ACC is certainly maintaining one of ACC’s core values to “seek and use resources wisely.”

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