{"id":23219,"date":"2015-01-01T13:30:43","date_gmt":"2015-01-01T18:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/?p=23219"},"modified":"2015-02-13T11:32:17","modified_gmt":"2015-02-13T16:32:17","slug":"from-local-threesome-to-national-jenzabar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2015\/from-local-threesome-to-national-jenzabar\/","title":{"rendered":"From local threesome to national Jenzabar\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">It all started\u00a0<\/span>in a corner of EMU&#8217;s old administration building in 1980. Two employees began tinkering \u2013 on their own time \u2212 with ways for colleges and universities to manage their administrative affairs with a new technology called computers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">The employees \u2013\u00a0<b>Dwight Wyse \u201868<\/b>, the school\u2019s director of business affairs, and\u00a0<b>Mark Shank<\/b>, director of computer services \u2212 cobbled together a company they called Computer Management and Development Services (CMDS). Their first client was EMU; their first employee was\u00a0<b>Harvey Mast \u201880<\/b>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">Mast, who shared with another student the distinction of being EMU\u2019s first computer majors, recalls one of his first computer classes: \u201cWe built a very simple computer out of a Heathkit package and inputted information with an eight-button keyboard, one 8-bit character at a time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">CMDS soon moved to a farmhouse on Virginia Avenue, which was eventually torn down to make room for the expansion of Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community (VMRC). In 1983 CMDS moved to a house next to Miller Cabinet Shop at the southwest edge of town and in 1986 to an office building on Virginia Avenue north of VMRC.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">The company grew to 160 employees, providing software and services to nearly 300 customers in 45 states. CMDS became one of the nation\u2019s leading developers of administrative software for colleges and universities, serving the offices of admissions, registration, alumni, development, financial aid and accounting. Its best-known software was TEAMS.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">In 1999 CMDS built an imposing corporate office building, designed by architects LeRoy Troyer and Randy Seitz, on Technology Drive off Mt. Clinton Pike near North Main Street (U.S. Route 11).<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">In 2000 CMDS made the momentous decision to be acquired by a new Boston company named Jenzabar. Jenzabar also acquired three of CMDS\u2019s competitors \u2013 Campus America of Knoxville, CARS of Cincinnati and Quodata of Hartford.\u00a0 CMDS and two of the other companies maintained their own buildings.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">After the merger, there was a period of significant employee turnover. A number of the key players in CMDS, including Wyse, left or were laid off. The imposing CMDS building was now too big, and Jenzabar moved its Harrisonburg offices to the headquarters of a former technology firm nearby at 1401 Technology Dr.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">Jenzabar supports more than 1,000 campuses in the United States and around the world. Some 20% of all U.S. colleges and universities use Jenzabar software. Among them is EMU.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">\u201cThe core product EMU uses today is Jenzabar EX, the flagship student information system sold by Jenzabar,\u201d said J<b>ack Rutt \u201972<\/b>, EMU\u2019s director of information systems from 1999 until last summer. \u201cSeveral other systems which supplement the functionality of EX have been added over the years, including MyEMU and a retention management system.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">Added\u00a0<b>Ben Beachy \u201902, MBA \u201909<\/b>, Rutt&#8217;s successor at EMU:\u00a0 \u201cA longstanding rumor in our department is that EMU was customer number one of CMDS, but I\u2019ve never seen the actual database record to verify that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">Today, 35 years after the founding of CMDS, Shank and Mast are still with the company. Fifteen EMU alumni work for Jenzabar.\u00a0 About half of them pre-date the merger. One of them,\u00a0<b>Mark Showalter \u201991<\/b>, joined the day \u2013 May 1, 2000 \u2212 that the merger was announced.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">The alumni at Jenzabar, in addition to Mast and Showalter, are:\u00a0\u00a0<b>Lois Ann Handrich \u201967<\/b>;\u00a0<b>Don Bomberger \u201972<\/b>;\u00a0<b>Dale Hartzler \u201985, MDiv. \u201908<\/b>;\u00a0<b>Brian Boettger \u201986, S \u201988, \u201991<\/b>;\u00a0<b>Mike Engle \u201987<\/b>;\u00a0<b>Mark Deavers \u201989<\/b>;\u00a0<b>Mike Weaver \u201990<\/b>;\u00a0<b>Robert Ranck \u201990<\/b>;\u00a0<b>Dale Hess \u201992<\/b>;\u00a0<b>Derek Christner \u201997<\/b>;\u00a0<b>Eric Weaver \u201902<\/b>;\u00a0<b>Mark Horst \u201905<\/b>; and\u00a0<b>Jessie Groeneweg \u201907<\/b>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It all started\u00a0in a corner of EMU&#8217;s old administration building in 1980. Two employees began tinkering \u2013 on their own time \u2212 with ways for colleges and universities to manage <a href=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2015\/from-local-threesome-to-national-jenzabar\/\" target=\"_self\" class=\"more-link\">... read more <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">about From local threesome to national Jenzabar\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":23220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4515,266,13808,5598,5730],"tags":[16367,15447,16371,16376,16377,16370,16364,6834,16356,16378,16366,16355,16338,16108,14520,13949],"feature":[],"class_list":["post-23219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","category-alumni","category-computer-science","category-mathematical-sciences","category-undergraduate-programs","tag-ben-beachy","tag-computer-science","tag-dale-hartzler","tag-dale-hess","tag-derek-christner","tag-don-bomberger","tag-dwight-wyse","tag-eastern-mennonite-university","tag-emu","tag-eric-weaver","tag-harvey-mast","tag-i-t","tag-information-technology","tag-jack-rutt","tag-mark-deavers","tag-randy-seitz"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>From local threesome to national Jenzabar\u00a0 - EMU News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2015\/from-local-threesome-to-national-jenzabar\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"From local threesome to national Jenzabar\u00a0 - EMU News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It all started\u00a0in a corner of EMU&#8217;s old administration building in 1980. 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