Kaskaskia College receives Ellucian Impact Award for Excellence

By Managing Editor | May 30, 2025 |

Kaskaskia College (KC) recently received the 2025 Ellucian Impact Award for Excellence in Software as a Service (SaaS) Modernization, earning the honor while competing against major universities across the world. KC staff traveled to Orlando, Fla., where Ellucian, a global software company, presented them with the award.

KC Vice President of Institutional Support & Technology and CIO George Kriss said Ellucian software is the keeper of everything related to students, employees and finance at KC. Ellucian is the college’s student information systems, financial management, HR system, and analytics platforms to help manage operations, student data, and administrative processes. Kaskaskia College’s quick and efficient transition from its on-campus system to Ellucian’s Colleague SaaS made the college stand out across the world.

“We are extremely honored to receive this award,” Kriss said. “The effort to modernize was spearheaded by IT, and the entire KC community did everything they could to get it done. When we went to the conference in Orlando, people from all over the world were in attendance. It was a humbling experience for us at KC to be given the honor.”

Kriss said Kaskaskia College decided to modernize through SaaS for a multitude of reasons, two being enhanced security and because IT staff was spending about 40 to 60 hours a month updating, patching and configuring the software locally at KC. By migrating to SaaS, the IT department was able to assist frontline employees who work directly with students, ultimately enhancing the overall process.

“We moved everything from our own local servers to Ellucian and Amazon servers in 14 months, completing the migration process efficiently and much faster than normal,” Kriss said. “We really moved it over on the perfect timeline, and it was a true campus effort from so many people at KC. Ellucian is able to protect our data on their servers a lot better than we’re able to protect it on our own. Now, through using SaaS, we don’t have to worry about emergencies, disasters, and power outages or anything else that could affect crucial parts of our operations. We want to keep all data, records and programs accessible to our employees as much as possible.”

Kaskaskia College is a public community college in Centralia, Ill., within South Central Illinois District 501, serving all or part of nine counties, including Bond, Clinton, Fayette, Marion, Washington, Jefferson, St. Clair, Madison, and Montgomery. Committed to making education accessible, Kaskaskia College offers training programs at the Centralia Crisp Manufacturing and Trades Center and has education centers in Greenville, Nashville, Salem, Trenton, and Vandalia, Ill. The Higher Learning Commission accredits the college, which offers a broad spectrum of degrees, programs, and certification options, specializing in 2-year associate degrees and trade school programs. Founded in 1940, Kaskaskia College was the first Class I Community College established in Illinois.

Photo courtesy Kaskaskia College.