Many signs lead to same place

   As many students have probably noticed, new building signs as well as room signs have been posted across all the campuses.
   This phase of the BESTT project, standing for "building excellent service through technology," has been in development over the course of this semester.
    These building and room name changes are part of the implementation of Colleague, a system of programs by vendor Datatel, which TCC chose to upgrade the district's information system.
    Though it might be confusing to students now, the name changes will allow the systematic identification of all spaces in the district's buildings.
    The naming system is designed to provide the greatest ease to students, staff and emergency personnel in locating rooms.
    The first rooms to be relabeled are the ones used for continuing education classes. Continuing education registration, as well, currently uses the new Colleague system.
    Registration via Colleague for credit students is set for Spring 2004.
    This month, the Financial Aid office can use Colleague for the fall 2003 semester. After that, the college's payroll and personnel offices will use the new human resource part of the system.
    Each module will be brought online by teams who work specifically on that module. Each team is in charge of investigating any perceivable problems and finding possible ways to improve the modules.
    Some students have expressed displeasure at the new building and room names.
    A group of students in the SSCI Building, formerly the South Campus Science building, said they had just figured out where all the buildings were, and now they would have to relearn the names.
    However, with the new system, students and staff will not have to struggle to determine which campus an orientation will be on. The building names will indicate which campus is in question.
    Campuses that have buildings with the same names, such as the NE Campus HPE and the South Campus HPE, will benefit from the building name changes.
   The first letter of each building's code represents the campus that the building is on: N for NE Campus, W for NW Campus, S for South Campus and E for SE Campus.
    One room on NE Campus was labeled CAB 118. The new name for this room is NCAB 1119. One can see why there might be some confusion.
    NE Campus student Taiyuan Yu said it took her a whole semester to learn where everything is.
    "I'm not smart, and now I have to remember everything again. I think I need compensation for it," she said.
    "If I go to the wrong buildings or can't find my classes next semester, I have someone to blame," she said.
    Still, students in future semesters are expected to find advantages in the new system.
    That is if the college can locate money in the budget to print maps.