Penn College Portal Manager Panelist at National Conference

The hurdles in delivering a collaborative internal-communication system to a diverse campus population were addressed by a Pennsylvania College of Technology employee and three of her colleagues at the 2011 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference in Philadelphia.

Wendy A. Cunningham, Penn College's manager of portal development and college documentation, joined a panel discussion of "Implementing a SharePoint Portal: A Roadmap to Success" at the Oct. 18-21 conference, which attracted more than 4,000 attendees (and hundreds more online).

"We provided an overview of the challenges and lessons learned while planning and implementing our portals," she said. "The perspectives of three different institutions meant that everyone in the audience was likely to find commonalities and some pointers that would apply to their institutions."

Cunningham was invited to participate by co-panelists Josh Mitchell, director of training and user support services at Montgomery County Community College, and Gerri Light, that college's business systems trainer. David Heffner, associate dean and chief information officer at Lycoming College, was a fourth member of the group.

Following their standing-room-only presentation, the panelists took questions from several individuals in the midst of their own portal implementation.

The mission of EDUCAUSE is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology. Its current membership comprises more than 2,200 colleges, universities and educational organizations with 17,000-plus active members.

Cunningham who also talked about the myPCT portal at the nonprofit association's Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference in January earned a master's degree in creative writing from Wilkes University and a bachelor's degree from Penn College in technical communication.

For more information about Penn College, visit ontheWeb , email or call toll-free 800-367-9222.