August 25, 2026
Dear SRJC Community,
I want to provide an update following last week’s meeting with senior executives and leaders from Ellucian, the company that provides Banner, and representatives of SRJC’s faculty, classified staff, and student government.
The first meeting was candid and direct. Our constituent leaders shared their experiences and concerns about the Banner implementation, and most importantly, the impact those challenges are having on students and employees. I want to thank our constituent leaders, especially our Student Government Assembly president, for conveying a strong sense of urgency and frustration. Together and in true SRJC community, we see the power of persistence, collaboration, and focused intention to support solutions for students and colleagues alike when we partner college-wide.
The visit also included another meeting with Academic Affairs, Student Services, and IT leads; the Ellucian leads and executives; and the SRJC Vice Presidents to provide details on the hundreds of tickets submitted and the prioritization of systemic needs to address those tickets. The visit ended with a commitment that Ellucian heard us and is making SRJC a priority to resolve our Banner system-related issues.
Following the meeting, Ellucian has committed to bringing a dedicated team to SRJC to work alongside our employees full time to stabilize the implementation and prepare the college for spring registration. Ellucian will focus on the complete student and employee journeys most critical to SRJC. The team arrives on August 31st and will include a Lead Consultant, Principal Success Manager, Delivery Manager, Architect, Testing Specialist, and product leaders for user experience discussions and enablement.
Their initial areas of focus will include:
- Enrollment – Ensuring a student can apply, be admitted, have their records and placement information received, have pre-requisites evaluated correctly, register for classes, move through a waitlist or add processes and receive confirmation they can rely on.
- Financial Aid – Ensuring the student financial lifecycle works from eligibility and awarding through disbursement, payment, and reconciliation.
- Spring Registration – Ensuring the Spring schedule builds correctly from the course and section setup through faculty assignment.
- Integrations – Ensuring the systems and integrations, such as CourseLeaf, DegreeWorks and others, supporting these processes work reliably from beginning to end, with Ellucian architects directly engaged in the work.
- User experience – Having Ellucian’s product team observe counselors, faculty, employees and students using the system so that what they learn directly informs the people responsible for building and improving the product.
These systems underpin most of the tickets and resource support requests we receive.
I appreciate that Ellucian has committed to putting people on the ground and working directly with SRJC. This is an important step, but it is just the beginning. We expect this work to result in meaningful improvements in the student and employee experience. With the Ellucian team onsite, we will be able to inform prioritization and co-create realistic, yet urgent, timelines to accomplish the work.
I also want to provide some context about SRJC’s efforts to escalate these concerns. I know there have been questions about when we began raising concerns with Ellucian and whether those concerns reached the company’s senior leadership. In summary, we raised our concerns repeatedly and at increasingly senior levels throughout the implementation.
For approximately two years, Vice President Kate Jolley and our implementation team escalated concerns about the challenges we were experiencing. In mid-March, I raised SRJC’s concerns directly at a statewide California Community College CEO Symposium. I learned other colleges were experiencing similar challenges and began working with those community college CEOs to elevate our concerns collectively through the state CEO structure.
In April, after go-live and as we faced increasing challenges, I met with Ellucian CEO Laura Ipsen and members of her leadership team to convey the seriousness of the challenges at SRJC and the need for support. Following that meeting, Josh Rice, Chief Commercial Officer, and Lenny Fenster, Senior Vice President of SaaS Innovation Delivery,, were identified as Ellucian’s senior leaders responsible for supporting our efforts.
In May, in response to colleges raising concerns individually and not seeing the level of response or results they needed, community college CEOs collectively developed and sent a letter to Ellucian expressing concerns about implementation, communication, and support. SRJC was part of that collective effort.
As I shared in my earlier communication, Ellucian’s response to us was delayed. When I received their response, I immediately requested an opportunity to meet and engage with senior leadership, and one outcome of those discussions was last week’s onsite meeting.
This history matters because I want to be clear that we have not waited until now to raise concerns. Our team has been escalating issues throughout the implementation, and I have been directly involved in escalating these concerns further with Ellucian’s senior leadership and other California community college CEOs. Our goal throughout has been to get the resources, expertise, and support necessary to resolve the problems our students and employees are experiencing.
I know that the Banner experience has been frustrating and deeply disruptive. I also know it is our responsibility to implement a system that makes it easy for people to register for a class, receive financial aid, get advising, build a schedule, or complete their work.
I am grateful to the faculty, classified professionals, administrators, students, and others who have continued to raise concerns, identify problems, and work toward solutions. Your advocacy and persistence are important.
Ellucian’s response following last week’s meeting is encouraging because it represents a commitment to focus on the full processes that students and employees depend on. Our immediate priorities are stabilization and ensuring students can pursue their higher education goals, while also improving the user experience.
I will continue to provide updates as this work progresses. Thank you for everything you do for students and for one another.
In Community,
Dr. Angélica Garcia, Ed.D.
Superintendent/President
707-527-4431, angelicagarcia@santarosa.edu
