Customer Stories

The College
of New Jersey

A Single Digital Platform Helps the Board of Trustees and committees at The College of New Jersey Conduct Business with Ease

Industry: Higher Education

Headquarters: Ewing, New Jersey

Board Management Goals

Streamlining board management without unnecessary programs that could bog down the process
Preparing and accessing agenda books for the Board of Trustees and the college president’s cabinet
Facilitate a convenient, paperless environment for board members to conduct meetings

Results

Significantly reduced the time the board secretary spent preparing for meetings
Streamlined, convenient model keeps board members engaged
Provided a user-friendly option for board members and administrators
Provided a safe, secure portal

The Challenges

Heather Fehn, chief of staff and secretary to the Board of Trustees at The College of New Jersey, considers herself “fairly tech-savvy,” so when the TCNJ alum accepted her position with the college 25 years ago, she immediately took steps to help the board go paperless.

“It didn’t take me too many cycles of board meetings to realize that I didn’t want to be collating paper board books for very long,” Fehn says.

She started the paperless process by creating PDF agendas with bookmarks, burning the PDFs onto a computer disk, then shipping out the computer disks to the 21-member TCNJ Board of Trustees.

“That crashed some of their systems, because their computers couldn’t handle a file that large,” Fehn explains. “It was wild, but it was our first foray into the paperless environment. After a few years dealing with disks and CDs, our IT department helped me build a website.”

While the password-protected, internal website was “pretty rudimentary,” Fehn says, it served her well for many years. The website’s simple construction allowed her to list bookmarked pages for the TCNJ Board of Trustees on the left side, with access to open the full documents on the right side and in the same window — unlike many of the early board portal offerings, which required users to open documents in new windows and navigate away from the website.

“It was ridiculous,” Fehn says. “I would not consider any of the early portals, because our homegrown site was, simply, more efficient.”

For over 15 years, Fehn has presented nationally on the topic of paperless board meetings and offices, sharing her TCNJ homegrown solution with groups like the National Association of Presidential Assistants in Higher Education (NAPAHE) and the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB). In the beginning, inevitably, vendors would approach her after these sessions to persuade her to try their online board portal solutions.

“Again, it would be this ‘open a new window’ product, or it would have so many bells and whistles that I knew it was just not the right product for my board,” Fehn says. “My board members want to be able to get in, get the information they need for a meeting, and get out.”

When an AGB OnBoard sales representative approached Fehn after one of her presentations more than two years ago, she immediately became intrigued with AGB OnBoard, a board management software platform that streamlines information into one central hub.

“The internal website we had was becoming more and more unstable,” Fehn says. “I didn’t have anybody left in my IT department who helped design the original frames-based website, and so they couldn’t help me fix it, either.

“AGB OnBoard is the reason why I finally said, ‘All right, we’re going to take the dive here.’ The primary reason was because AGB OnBoard met the needs of my board members with a streamlined approach, without the unnecessary bells and whistles,” Fehn says.

“It saves time, in that I don't have to email trustees individual documents now. I can put, for instance, a roster there and just draw their attention to it.”

The Solution for Paperless Board Meetings

Fehn utilizes AGB OnBoard to prepare and access agenda books for the TCNJ Board of Trustees and the president’s Cabinet, as well as NAPAHE, where she serves as an honorary board member. The TCNJ Foundation Board also uses the OnBoard software platform to conduct its business, she says.

As a state institution serving approximately 7,000 undergraduate and graduate students, Fehn says the TCNJ Board of Trustees must take action on agenda items in quarterly public meetings. Board committees meet three weeks before a public board meeting, and often on the same day as board meetings. Trustees are appointed by the governor and approved by the state senate. The board is responsible for holding the College in trust for the public, and overseeing governance, policies, and development of the College within the spirit of its mission and New Jersey law.

“The president’s cabinet meets weekly. Materials for these meetings typically include an agenda and usually a couple of handouts,” Fehn says. “The board meets much less frequently, and those are much more information-intensive. We’re preparing materials almost constantly for the board.”

To facilitate a paperless environment, Fehn encourages board members to bring their own devices to view materials or sets up projectors and screens for every meeting — whether it’s a cabinet, board, or committee session — to display board packet information stored on the AGB OnBoard portal. This way, the documents are available for everyone to review at each meeting, regardless of how much they prepared in advance.

“It saves time, in that I don’t have to email trustees individual documents now. I can put, for instance, a roster there and just draw their attention to it,” Fehn says. “The committees are using the resources section well, too. If there are documents or charters they have to refer to regularly, they’ll put them there and then they know they can always have easy access to them.

“Due to its frequency of meetings, I use the cabinet organization most often. That has become a place where every week I put the agenda and whatever background materials are there, and it’s fantastic, because we can all go back and find whatever we need,” she says.

“If you're going to spend any more than one meeting doing both paper and digital, you're wasting your time and you're not doing your trustees a service.”

The Solution to Better Board Meeting Navigation

Fehn says AGB OnBoard makes it easy for board members to access the directory to find and communicate with other board members, and the resources section is especially handy when trying to find specific information about a previously discussed topic.

“The navigation is much cleaner and easier within a particular meeting,” Fehn says. “Navigating through meeting materials is seamless.”

With her efforts to go paperless already ensconced over the years with the various boards, transitioning to the AGB OnBoard platform proved seamless for the diverse group of board members, ranging in age from their 30s to their 70s.

“I simplified the training and communicated with our board members directly, to make sure they had the basics of what they needed out of the portal,” she says. “I received very few questions, and was pleasantly surprised with how quickly they picked up how to access materials.”

AGB OnBoard also makes Fehn’s job a little easier, since she can delegate responsibilities to other college staff members to load necessary documents into the portal before giving final approval.

“They have administrative access to a particular meeting and populate it with materials, but only I make meetings ‘visible,’ Fehn says. “This gives me the opportunity to review the information and provide access to board members when it’s time, but it’s really kind of nice that I don’t have to be the one doing all the uploading.”

For other college administrators who are considering board portal software, Fehn advises a “ripping-off-the-Band-Aid” approach.

“You’ve just got to pull off the Band-Aid,” she says. “If you’re going to spend any more than one meeting doing both paper and digital, you’re wasting your time and you’re not doing your trustees a service.”

“If something happens on the campus and our IT goes down, I still have access to this information.”

The Solution to Better Control and Security

For any university’s board of trustees, Fehn says security plays a critical role in the handling of sensitive financial information. The AGB OnBoard platform’s encryption and other safety features help keep the information secure and accessible, while still giving Fehn control over who sees what and when.

“Security is critical,” Fehn says. “We’ve all got business continuity plans on our campuses. Knowing that you have this and it’s secure, and if something happens on the campus and our IT goes down, I still have access to this information and it’s being kept somewhere else, is critical.”

“My board has no idea the full capability of AGB OnBoard, and that's OK. It's doing for them what they need it to do.”

The Result

Fehn says AGB OnBoard provides TCNJ a secure and stable platform that saves her time, keeps her board better engaged, and “doesn’t try to do too much.”

“OnBoard is the most user-friendly product that I’ve experienced, not just from the board member perspective, but from the administration side as well,” says the tech-savvy board administrator.

Before deciding to adopt AGB OnBoard, Fehn suggests exploring what problems you’re trying to solve and then determining how the board portal can help you solve them.

“Look at it from that perspective first. There are going to be a lot of other things that it can do that you might not even realize will be a benefit, but you don’t have to implement it all at the same time,” Fehn says. “My board has no idea the full capability of AGB OnBoard, and that’s OK. It’s doing for them what they need it to do.”

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