Fifty miles south of San Francisco in the heart of Silicon valley, Santa Clara University is situated on 103 acres of gardens accented with palm trees and historic Spanish colonial architecture. A leading Catholic University in the West, it has seen a lot of change since its origination as a mission in the late 1700's. The first institution for higher learning in the state of California, SCU became widely popular during the gold rush. In the early 1900's the university adjusted its curriculum to meet the standards of a more secular and practical orientation. After World War II, student enrollment soared and in the 1970's the Board of Trustees voted to limit the size of the undergraduate population.

Today, SCU enrolls approximately 4,100 undergraduates and 4,000 graduates and houses 1850 residents in 13 residential facilities. The private university continues to maintain its adaptiveness and yet as one walks through the SCU Mission Gardens with 496 rose bushes, there is a strong sense of Santa Clara's rooted commitment to maintaining its fundamental Jesuit and Catholic mission to provide a values-oriented education.

Initial Objectives

Santa Clara University wants to continually meet the growing need for competitive, convenient, efficient, as ell as cost effective, student services. With that in mind, SCU researched and evaluated campus card system applications. Their research showed, among other things, that they would increase customer satisfaction and increase revenue with a comprehensive card program. In addition SCU wanted to increase management visibility over retail operations and facility use patterns and consolidate administrative off-line operations scattered all over campus. Their evaluation also indicated that a secure, convenient card system would be a great asset in allowing them to budget, consolidate and track campus expenses. SCU also looked at updating their food service offering which included moving from the old traditional board plan to a new flexible, declining balance program. Replacing their key system with a more efficient online card system for facility access to residence halls and new high tech facilities was also on the SCU list of objectives.

Following approval from SCU's President and Vice Presidents, a project team worked up a conceptual design for a card program. The team was made up of representatives from the principal departments to be affected by a new card program. They outlined the scope and timeline of the program. Among other issues they reviewed the applications and accounts to be offered as well as policies, procedures and banking relationships.

Proposed Solutions

By the fall of 1994, a request for proposal (RFP) was written and submitted. The major criteria SCU evaluated for when selecting a vendor included:

• System features that made sense and covered campus present and future needs
• Strategic technology platform
• Financially and organizationally viable partner with good track record and references
• Cost of return on immediate investment and operating costs

In December of 1994, SCU selected AT&T CampusWide as its vendor. SCU found additional strengths in the AT&T CampusWide Optim9000 system -- the Hewlett Packard (HP) platform, a single database that is easy to manage and eliminates redundancy, on-line visibility, easy to read and understandable screens, durable, easy to use readers and the carding system video image interface.

Solutions in Action

In the Fall of 1995, SCU installed the Optim9000 system. They established a card office and carded the entire campus with its new card called ACCESS. SCU immediately implemented a calling card option through AT&T's ACUS offering which interfaces to the Optim9000 system. Since that initial phase, SCU has implemented 185 locations spread over 26 buildings. They are controlling 100 doors through the CampusWide Optim9000 network of readers, as well as, 85 point-of-sale locations, including all campus restaurants and mobile food carts, the convenience store and the bookstore and multiple remote card value transfer stations. Card applications also include copy, laundry, vending, ticket offices and libraries. The Optim9000 system eliminates the need for manual entry by using interfaces for the student records, bookstore POS, payroll, video imaging and the AT&T ACUS offering. SCU widely shares the benefits and successes of the AT&T campus card solution, including:

• Increased customer satisfaction and security for its campus population by creating a secure, convenient, cashless environment with a campus card system.
• Enhanced management reporting for retail operations, facility usage and service utilization through the collection of data that provides customer profile usage to promote efficient staffing, enhanced marketing and overall improvement in managing the campus environment.
• Increased sales and decreased costs in vending and cash operations through customer convenience, decreased cost and security risks of cash handling, and on-line visibility and reporting.

SCU has dedicated considerable efforts to promoting the use of the ACCESS card. A key initiator and promoter of the card program, Jane Barrantes, Manager ACCESS Services states, "The ACCESS card program has been widely accepted and successful due to the early involvement of the campus in SCU card program design and extensive campus communication." Jane spent days getting office groups together to introduce the new card program, review a card program guide and answer questions. Looking out five years, SCU will work toward further integration of its calling card program, internet access, personal terminal access to campus systems, wider use of access control, on-line credit card transfer, and an open non-exclusive banking interface. An off-campus card value receptacle and a combination stripe and chip card are also possibilities.