Making Change: Of Mullets and Data Sets

Hello, fellow Clark colleagues. We have been involved in an exciting move of some data from all community and technical colleges in Washington. In support of the FirstLink colleges (Spokane and Tacoma) going live as beta testers for ctcLink, the SBCTC technical team needed to  migrate some critical data into the new system (ctcLink) from the legacy system we are still currently using. This was done in early April, even though FirstLinks are not  going live until August.

There are types of data that are “global” in nature, meaning it may be useful to all 34 colleges in the ctcLink system. For example, the biographical and demographic data for students and employees are global. You might be a student at one college and an employee at another college–but, since both colleges are part of ctcLink, you only need one shared record with one ID for both institutions. The vendor list for colleges is another example of global data.

So in preparation for the August 2014 go-live for Firstlink colleges, the SBCTC and Ciber teams migrated the data from our legacy systems into the new ctcLink system. This was the first global movement of data into ctcLink; it was done so that as colleges move onto the new ctcLink system, the global data will be there for them.

The data that was moved is data the Clark College has been focused on in a cleanup effort so that it would migrate (move over) to the new system without a hitch. This move doesn’t affect those of us still using the legacy system, because all that student, employee and vendor data still reside in our current databases as well. The real importance is that the project of getting ready for ctcLink has met a big milestone with migration of global data into the new system. Much is to be learned as this process continues. More updates will be available on the project next month.

While we work quietly behind the scenes on other efforts in preparation for the August 2014 – May 2015 transition of Wave One colleges, I wanted to share a video that was produced by one of our fellow Wave One colleges, Grays Harbor College. It is a great short video regarding what ctcLink is, why we are doing it, and whom it will affect. Plus, it’s got a few jokes sure to appeal to those of us who remember the ’80s. You’ll just have to watch it to see what I mean.

In this video you will hear reference to our subject matter expert (SMEs). So I’m providing a link to the ctcLink internal webpage for Clark College that has additional information regarding ctcLink and who all of our SME’s are: http://team.clark.edu/sites/ClarkNet/departments/changemanagement/SitePages/ctcLink.aspx.

As always, if you have any questions regarding ctcLink, please don’t hesitate to ask!