Case Study: Mt. San Antonio College achieves faster, more accurate placement and higher transfer‑level English/math completion with Ellucian Banner

Developing an online assessment tool for course placement

Mt. San Antonio College (Mt. SAC), a large public community college in California, faced a slow, labor-intensive placement process that required on‑campus testing and often put students into lower-level English and math courses—disproportionately affecting Latinx, African American, and Pacific Islander students—while needing to comply with California’s AB 705 multiple‑measures mandate. To modernize placement and integrate with its enterprise systems, Mt. SAC worked with Ellucian and its Ellucian Banner® ERP to implement a more accurate, student-centered assessment approach.

Working across IT, faculty, research, and student services, Mt. SAC built an online Assessment Questionnaire (AQ) on Oracle APEX that integrates with Ellucian Banner, letting students complete placements anywhere, automatically recording results and enabling immediate registration. The Ellucian-enabled solution cut testing time by over three hours per student, attracted 785 completions in week one and nearly 17,000 in ten months, and drove transfer-level placements from 15% to 81% in English and from 19% to 38% in math, while improving English course success rates (67% vs. prior 60%).

Mt. San Antonio College

Antonio Bangloy

Director, Enterprise Application Systems