December 20, 2021

New Mexico, US: Cross-College Collaboration

I It is collaboration instead of competition for five community colleges in New Mexico, US. The five-college consortium in New Mexico, known as CHESS, is a space dedicated to share resources and information, a common enterprise resource planning structure. It aims to increase efficiency and make student experience more streamlined.

CHESS (Collaborative for Higher Education Shared Services) comprises Central New Mexico Community College, Clovis Community College, Northern New Mexico College, San Juan College, and Santa Fe Community College. The consortium, with the help of consulting firms like CampusWorks and Workday, has set up multi-institution HR, financial management services like payroll and accounting, student records, to name a few. This is to make the campus operations efficient and cost-effective.

A game-changer for how colleges collaborate to improve the effectiveness of higher education across the state

A cross-institutional collaboration like this, no doubt, requires a great amount of trust, easing up on the competition, and changes in the internal work culture.
A groundbreaking partnership like this will most definitely change the higher education experience for students as well as other stakeholders. This collaboration is supported by the New Mexico Independent Community Colleges and the New Mexico Higher Education Department.

"Bringing together five diverse colleges from five unique communities to reimagine and implement a life-changing college experience for our students is the most important action we can undertake to improve the education and quality of life for New Mexicans," said Becky Rowley, Ph.D., President of Santa Fe Community College.

"This landmark effort is going to make so many processes outside of the classroom much simpler for students by reducing the barriers and time that's typically required to enter college, stay in college, and transfer between colleges," said CNM President Tracy Hartzler. "This will help more students successfully enroll and progress to graduation and jobs. The new shared technology will also allow our colleges to be more efficient, more effective, and more collaborative than ever before. Our colleges will be able to share expertise to a much greater extent since we'll all be using the same systems and processes. It's going to be a game-changer for how colleges collaborate to improve the effectiveness of higher education across the state", she adds.

Posted in Collaborations and tagged US, Collaborations, New Mexico, Higher Education Bookmark the Permalink