Since its founding in 1856, Seton Hall has been committed to strong academics and quality education. While the University has grown and changed over the last 150 years, academic excellence has remained at the forefront of its mission.
Through the Banner Project, Seton Hall has yet another opportunity to transform itself. We, as an institution, have used technology for teaching and learning since the inception of our award-winning Mobile Computing Program and the introduction of the World Wide Web. Today, we have an opportunity for our administrative functions to catch up and keep pace with our academic and learning endeavors. This new system (SCT Banner) can truly empower employees — at every level — to work more effectively to create value for our students, employees and others who come into contact with the University.
Why is such a change necessary, you ask? The answer is simple: Over the last 10-15 years, our current system, SCT Plus, has exhausted itself. We’ve been told it is approaching “end of life,” which ultimately means support is ending. The University has also had a dramatic expansion — in undergraduate and graduate programs, online education opportunities, cohort and off-site academic endeavors and more. Because of this dramatic growth, there are increasing technological and scholastic complexities to address, and those must be balanced with the greater expectations of end users. Higher education is competitive, and we at Seton Hall have always had a commitment to being on the leading edge.
The evolution to this new system will need the support of every unit of the University. Banner sub-teams will be asked to candidly examine our current policies and processes in order to streamline them and focus on stronger institutional effectiveness. With Banner, we have the opportunity to improve our policies and processes, our Web site and its self-service options.
Banner SCT will ultimately provide ease of use, cohesion, data integrity and a multitude of other operational efficiencies that will support the University as a whole. Our academic integrity is international in scope, and, with this new administrative system we rise to that academic reputation from an administrative standpoint. But it won’t happen overnight. As with anything, there will be bugs and a “settling-in” period. And we recognize that.
Over the next three years, we will launch different Banner modules (see the timeline) provide training and spend time reviewing and refining processes in order to fully utilize the full effects of Banner.
I thank the members of the Banner Project Executive Steering Committee and the many sub-teams that will address the individual modules. This is a transformative opportunity for the University and our employees, something that may only come along once in your career, and I thank everyone for their support and commitment to making Seton Hall University an even better place to work and teach.
Sister Paula Buley, I.H.M., Ed.D.
Executive Vice President for Administration
