MU’s Data Administrator Wins Awards, Helps Organize PowerCampus Conference
Aaron Kryger has a busy couple days ahead of him. The data administrator will be running five of the 18 workshops offered at the Western Region PowerCampus Users Group Conference June 28 and 29. Designed specifically for colleges and universities, PowerCampus is an integrated student management system that improves processes to help institutions lower costs and boost performance.
Kryger, who sits on the conference planning committee, has been working with PowerCampus since he started serving Multnomah’s IT Department in 2007. “Over the years, I keep learning more and more about it,” he says. “In order to support people, I need to know the product as well as I can.”
His knowledge has already earned him recognition within the PowerCampus user network. Ellucian, the company producing PowerCampus, hosts an online community for the product — it’s a great place to troubleshoot, learn tips and garner support from other PowerCampus users. Community members are granted points for answering peoples’ questions, and members who accumulate the most points are given awards. For two years in a row, Kryger has received an Outstanding eCommunities Contributor Award for “excellence in community-building and support of peers and colleagues.”
“I really like being able to help people,” he says. “I enjoy learning, and I like the challenge of figuring out how to make information understandable to others.”
At the conference this week, Kryger will get to help even more people when he covers session topics such as maintaining security and generating faculty contracts. The day-and-a-half event will join PowerCampus users from Oregon, Washington, California, New Mexico, Minnesota and even Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory in the South Pacific. More than 225 schools worldwide use PowerCampus; eleven will be represented at the conference.
Kryger says the regional event, which was launched last year, is a cost-effective way for users to learn more about their product. Whereas the national PowerCampus conference costs $1,000 per ticket, the regional conference sets attendees back $30.
“I’m glad the conference has grown this year,” says Kryger. “But more than that, I’m happy some of the Ellucian PowerCampus team will be here to host workshops and answer questions. This is a great opportunity for those who aren’t able to make it to the national conference.”
The event’s opening session will include an update presented by an Ellucian product manager, who plans on sharing what users can expect from PowerCampus in the future.
Whatever that future holds, Kryger is ready to help people make the most of it. In the meantime, he anticipates the conference will forge important connections between institutions. “My hope is that the attendees would all come away with a better knowledge of PowerCampus,” he says. “Since it’s such a broad system, there’s always more to learn.”
June 27, 2017 | News