New computer system gets director

Glasses, dark hair, and a beard that highlights his friendly and open smile, Mark Gutierrez is excited to start working as the Director of Enterprise Applications Services.

While he is eager to begin heading the LancerPoint staff and supporting its launch, Gutierrez admits that his short time on campus has been overwhelming. A large stack of files already sit on his desk awaiting his perusal. “Iâ€™ve only been here a week,” he said.

Gutierrez worked in a similar position at Rio Hondo College for 25 years before coming to PCC. He was the Banner Technical Project Leader there for the program called Access Rio, which is its version of LancerPoint.

“I was looking to move into management,” he said as explanation for the job change. It was also a shorter commute; he lives in Chino with his wife of 28 years.

Gutierrez met his wife when they were both attending Rio Hondo. They have two children who are both college students; his daughter attends Mt. San Antonio College and his son goes to Chaffey College. Very recently Gutierrez earned his BA in business administration from New Charter University, an online school.

Gutierrezâ€™s job is to help the college transition from the current registration service, Santa Rosa, to the new LancerPoint system. From there, he will be in charge of the staff running LancerPoint.

“Pretty much everything will be done through LancerPoint,” said Gutierrez. As he explains it, LancerPoint will have a feature called the Portal. The Portal will include registration services, access to the library website, a hub for clubs to communicate and a place where faculty will post their grades and class rosters. Portal will also be linked to Canvas, a website where teachers post assignments and discussions for their class.

“The goal is to have [students] log in once and be able to access all the services,” he said. According to Gutierrez, Portal is scheduled to launch this summer.

During his first week here, Gutierrez hasnâ€™t encountered any major problems. “There are always bumps in the road, but no show stoppers so far.”

While the Late Spring issue has been a problem for some, it has actually benefitted the LancerPoint staff. According to Gutierrez, it bought them time to find more staff members. “It gave us time to bring in more staff because [the number of staff we have] now is not sufficient to support LancerPoint,” he said.