Allen Community College will be closed to the public Friday as employees begin training on a new student information system being implemented this month.
Cami Keitel, Allen’s vice president for student affairs, told trustees Tuesday the changeover will force the college to go “old school” for a while.
“We’ll have a two-week time period where we can’t be in our old system, and we can’t be in our new system yet,” Keitel said.
The new system, called Jenzabar, affects several student-service offices, including the registrar, financial aid, business office and cashier.
Students and parents already have been warned and encouraged to get any sort of records needed ahead of time, such as transcript requests, enrollment verification or financial aid records.
All of the offices have set up protocols to continue serving students while the college “goes dark,” Keitel noted. Data has been pulled from some systems so it can be accessed manually.
Keitel expects the new system to be up and running by early March, “maybe even earlier, if things go better than planned.”
One of the most affected segments will be students who also work for the college, Keitel noted.
They will receive their regular paychecks Friday, but likely will not receive another check until four weeks later.
When pressed by trustees, she said the college will have safeguards in place in case one of the student workers needs emergency access to funding during the down period.
KEITEL also shared enrollment figures for the spring 2026 semester.
Overall numbers are down, both in terms of headcount (4.5%) and total number of hours enrolled (about 2%).
The largest drop continues to be online, which has decreased 23% since 2023, although on-campus, and concurrent and online high school students have increased substantially.
While the college has been looking at ways to appeal to a wider swath of students young and old, Keitel touched on a recent promotion that garnered rave reviews.
Yates Center High School brought its boys and girls basketball teams, cheer squad and band students en masse to ACC’s home basketball games Feb. 4 against Highland. The band students — Humboldt High School musicians joined in the fun as well — and cheerleaders joined their Allen compatriots for a number of activities, while the basketball teams took part in a light-hearted competition during halftime of the men’s game.
Feedback was so positive that Allen has scheduled another special night Feb. 25.
