It’s colorful, it’s plastic, it’s new and most importantly, it’s free.
Cerritos College will be releasing the new student IDs on Thursday, Sept. 17.
Dean of Student Services Dr. Gilbert Contreras said, “I’m really excited about the new ID’s. We’re transitioning over this summer […] The student senate last year approved the expense, it was a little bit over $20,000 to switch over to the new company and to get the new hardware installed, new cameras, new printers, the whole new software and it has been a really good addition.”
He added, “The reason I’m so excited about the IDs is because we’ll have IDs at the quality of any institution, like four year institutions, universities, we’ll have IDs that are really powerful and they can do what we need them to do.”
Students can use the new IDs in the library or learning resource center and the school will be able to track a student’s hours in each place respectively.
According to Contreras, it will be helpful for services to have that student data.
Nikki Jones, supervisor of the ID Center, expressed that the new IDs will not come at an additional cost to students.
As for the school, Contreras stated, “No more costs, the startup cost was what was the big expense, but moving forward we just noticed we bought our fall stickers, the new company saved us [more than] $2,000 because their stickers were a lot more affordable than the previous two vendors […] so we’re saving money there,”
“And then just the ongoing expense of the maintenance agreements, which we had with the previous company as well, is a little bit cheaper than the previous company,”he added.
The dean of Student Services expressed that any new expenses would come down a few years down the line when the printers may need an upgrade or a replacement.
Contreras added, “[Maybe], five or seven years down the line, but you expect that with any investment.”
Although concrete numbers won’t be available until the bills come in, Dr. Contreras expressed that the new IDs will be cost effective.
“At one point we talked about using the ID to serve as the bus pass, but we went away from that because it was too expensive and a lot of students had input on that,” Contreras said.
He added that they haven’t given up on the bus card program.
“These are IDs that are cost effective, they are high-quality, they look good, I’m really excited about it,” he concluded.
Jones said, “It’s basically a new look and just something different, something updated. It has our library building on it, so it looks really nice, in fact we added a lot more color to it and we have the names bolder […] they should be better for the library.”
“We’re tying to get everyone on campus to use it, so we’re making it so that everyone transitions, even the faculty, the staff, everybody.”
Contreras echoed, “We’re really hoping everyone moves over to it, but we understand some people already have it and it’s kind of a hassle to go back, but we’re going to use both for a while and hopefully transition people over.”
According to the dean of Student Services, the college is working hard to make the release date line up with the 60th celebration of Cerritos College.
“We’re excited about Sept. 17, students can come in and get a new ID, they don’t have to, the old ones will still work, but if they want a new ID it will be available to them.”
“They’re branded with the Cerritos College library on them and I just think that it’s something everyone can be proud of, that they’re a Falcon and that their new ID is a standard in the industry,” Contreras said.
