New Student Information System (SIS), Portal Tool, and FAQ

The 5Cs' 20-year-old student information system, Jenzabar CX, is built on outdated, heavily customized and soon to be obsolete on-premises technology. This creates a fragile foundation for our academic operations. With dwindling expert support, Pitzer and the other 5Cs urgently need a modern Student Information System (SIS) to meet the colleges’ unique needs for the foreseeable future.

On Feb. 18, the 5C SIS project held a town hall meeting for the Claremont Colleges community to address questions and provide an overview of the project:

• The presentation slide deck can be viewed here: 2/18/2025 SSIS Town Hall Presentation.
• A recording of the meeting can be viewed here: 2/18/2025 SSIS Town Hall Recording.
• The Q&A document can be found here: 2/18/2025 SSIS Town Hall Q&A [PDF].

Anthology Student is a cloud-based solution that is being implemented in a single tenant serving all 5Cs. 

Anthology Student will support key functions such as academic records, cross-registration, degree audits, student advising, student accounts, and institutional research among others. It is also possible to extend the functionality of the new SIS through the development of new custom features.

Anthology Student is following a phased implementation from planning and design to testing and launch. Though a specific launch date has yet to be determined, Anthology Student will become the new system of record for all 5C’s SIS functions before the 26/27 academic year.

Anthology Student will have a dedicated web address or URL that will require users to log in with their Pitzer Single Sign-On (SSO) credentials. The live Anthology portal links will be shared at a later date. The SIS will also be accessible via the campus portal and new mobile application (See Pathify).

Community members will be trained throughout the SIS implementation process with end-user training coming in later in Fall 2025. Job aids, multi-format reference materials, and TCCS Project Team support will also be made available to all Anthology users.

Anthology Student will provide a link for securely accessing the student billing system, CASHNet. CASHNet is configured to use Single Sign-On, so users will not need a separate set of login credentials.

All students that will be continuing their enrollment for Fall 2025, will pre-register for courses in April 2025 as they usually do (on the MyCampus 2 portal).

Yes, the new Anthology Student portal will include a feature called Degree Progress Audit. This feature will show educational objectives, major, and minor requirements similar to the My Degree Progress portlet currently available through the portal.

Yes, the portal will contain a transcript for all 5C students. The new transcript is modeled on the current official transcript, displaying all courses taken in chronological order. An unofficial transcript will also be available.

The Anthology Student portal will give students the ability to request permission to enroll in a course. This custom feature is being developed for all 5Cs and will function much like the Permission to Enroll (PERM) request does in the portal today.

Anthology Student includes a dedicated faculty portal for managing grades, class rosters, and advising information. Pitzer faculty should expect some changes to Pitzer’s academic processes (e.g., new forms, approvals, system messages), which will be documented for training as the SIS implementation progresses.

The Anthology Student portal will give 5C students the ability to request permission to enroll in a course. Instructors will use the faculty portal to access and review these requests. It will function much like the Permission to Enroll (PERM) request does in the portal today.

Because Anthology Student and the current campus portal are built with different technology, only a small number of existing custom features are being replicated in Anthology Student and will be made available when the system goes live this summer.  Additional portal features, such as links to administrative systems like Workday will be accessible through the new campus portal (see Pathify).

A live data integration between the Canvas LMS and the new SIS is currently in development and is expected to go-live along with Anthology Student . Some course information from Canvas may also be viewable within Pathify when it is officially launched.

Any student who has taken a course at any of the 5Cs since 09/01/2015 will have a record in Anthology Student. Note that the data points for imported student records may differ from those that are currently available in CX.

Approximately two weeks prior to the launch date of Anthology SIS, all integrations with the Jenzabar CX system will be taken offline. During this quiet period, no changes will be recorded in CX. Any data coming from upstream systems during the 2-week quiet period will then be synced into Anthology Student after the launch.

Pitzer will continue to maintain and support the existing Cognos reporting environments for a necessary transitional period in order to provide access to historical data prior to 2015, but will not include new data from Anthology. Any new SIS reports will be created in Microsoft Power BI, which is the native reporting tool for Anthology Student.

The SIS Project Team has taken inventory of all the shared and campus-specific data integrations that rely on Jenzabar CX. These integrations are currently being redesigned to replace CX with Anthology Student as the system of record. A large part of these integrations will be developed and supported directly by Anthology. The remaining ones will fall under the purview of either TCCS or the individual colleges that utilize them.

Pathify is an engagement platform that centralizes campus resources and information into a single, all-encompassing portal and intranet, which includes a mobile app for on-the-go access. Pathify will be the new campus portal solution for all of the 5Cs and will interface with the Anthology Student Information System.

Pathify is intended to be a one-stop-shop for accessing campus resources for faculty, staff and students. Anthology Student manages student data and administrative processes like course registration. While they are distinct systems, Pathify has the capability to display information directly from the SIS. To avoid any confusion between the Anthology Student/Faculty portals and Pathify, the new campus portal is being dubbed the “Pitzer Hub”.

The Pathify implementation project is currently underway and is expected to go live before the 26/27 academic year, in line with the Anthology SIS launch.  A soft launch months before the official release of Pathify will provide a subset of faculty, staff and students with an opportunity to preview the new portal solution and share their feedback.

Because Pathify and the current campus portal are built with different technology, only a small number of custom features will be replicated in the new Pitzer Hub. Essential custom features will be made available at go-live, with additional ones to be developed and deployed through the rest of the academic year.

Upon go-live, users can reach the new Pitzer Hub by going to hub.pitzer.edu in their web browser, or by downloading the Pitzer Hub app in their mobile devices’ App store.

Pathify offers plentiful documentation, training (live and recorded), technical support, as well as community resources. Customized training will be offered to administrative users across campus. Pitzer IT and DSI will also provide relevant knowledge-base articles and offer immediate technical support for any issues that may arise.