News R3

Krista Pearson, Algonquin College’s Vice President, Student Services, discusses her new role as the R3 Project’s Executive Sponsor.

Krista Pearson is a higher-education executive leader with three decades of experience in colleges and universities across Canada. She joined Algonquin College in 2015 as Registrar and, following a national search process, assumed the role of Vice President, Student Services in August 2024.

As Registrar, Krista was one of the R3 Project’s Co-Business Leads. Now, in her new role, Krista serves as the Executive Sponsor of the R3 Project, which she describes as a transformative initiative “unlike any other project that the College has undertaken.”

We recently met with Krista in Nawapon to talk about her experience, her goals, and the impact of the R3 Project.

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The Testing Team is essential to ensuring that Algonquin College’s new Student Information System (SIS), Thesis SM, works as smoothly as possible. Their primary responsibilities involve identifying, assessing, and reporting bugs, i.e., imperfections in computer software.

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The R3 Project is developing Thesis SM, a new cloud-based Student Information System (SIS), for Algonquin College. We’ve been sharing demos of Thesis SM with the College community for several years, so now it’s your turn to try it out! We’ve created an interactive demo of Thesis SM for you to practice a simple task: updating a person’s address.

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The R3 Project is developing Thesis SM, Algonquin College’s new Student Information System. This complex task requires the coordinated effort of a large group of people, including business analysts, integration architects, training specialists, and more.

With so many roles involved, how do project members stay in sync? Enter Amir Akbari, Project Scheduler. By overseeing an extensive workback schedule with thousands of entries, Amir plays a crucial role in maximizing collaboration across the R3 Project teams.

Igor Coelho A. S. Marques recently spoke with Amir to learn more about his work. Here’s a snippet of their conversation:

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October’s Showcase event was a continuation of our May and July Showcase events, which focused on Course Enrolment. The event was hosted by Krista Pearson, Vice President of Student Services and R3 Project’s Executive Sponsor, who welcomed more than 240 participants.

Lauren Draper, Project Manager, Business Transformation, provided a summary of Thesis terminology, a quick review of some key topics that were presented during the May and July Showcase events, and an update on the R3 Project’s role in helping AC transition to the new Course Enrolment process.

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Making great movies takes more than a talented director or a popular lead actor. Great movies are brought to life by the orchestrated effort of many hard-working people, from camera operators to caterers, each contributing their expertise to the project.

Similarly, a solid Student Information System (SIS) must be integrated with a variety of services to meet the needs of a community like ours. To achieve this, the R3 Project and Information Technology Services (ITS) are working together to integrate dozens of industry-leading solutions to Thesis SM, Algonquin College’s new SIS.

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Nowadays, when we need technical support, we go online and look for tutorials, articles, forums, chatbots—anything that can help us better understand what we’re trying to do. There are times, however, that instead of scouring the web, what we really need—and want—is another human being who’ll listen to us, understand our issue, and help us solve it.

We at the R3 Project understand this! Yes, we’re preparing a plethora of online help materials covering every imaginable task in the new Thesis Student Portal. But we’re also partnering with other teams in the College to deliver the Portal Pathfinder Program and offer more personalized help to learners.

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Algonquin College is working closely with Thesis to develop a cloud-based Student Information System (SIS) that is tailor-made for our community. Part of this collaboration involves creating dozens of highly detailed functional specifications—or specs, for short—that will improve the College’s business processes and elevate the experience of both learners and employees.

Igor Coelho A. S. Marques talked with Haya Majbour, Business Analyst, and Lauren Draper, Project Manager, Business Transformation, to learn more about their work, including a recent push to deliver over 90 functional specs to Thesis.

Here’s some of their conversation:
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The R3 Project is replacing Algonquin College’s current Student Information System (SIS), GeneSIS, with Thesis SM. This means that all the important data GeneSIS has stored for nearly three decades needs to be migrated to the new SIS.

Igor Coelho A. S. Marques sat down with Michael Kahil, a data migration expert on the R3 Project’s Data Governance team, to chat about data migrations. Here’s a snippet of their conversation:

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According to a group of Canadian researchers, taking regular micro-breaks at work can boost your performance and improve your well-being—especially if you can go outside for a little bit. Micro-breaks last only a few minutes, but they can relieve pressure and help us find the focus we need to tackle the challenges we encounter at work.

If you’re ready for a micro-break, we’ve got something to help you unwind and have fun: the R3 Project Crossword. Can you complete it in under five minutes?

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