Talia Cutler ‘27
Editor in Chief
On Dec. 20, 2025, Trinity rolled out a new reporting system for employees and student workers, which had been in development stages for 18 months. Previously, student workers logged their hours through self-reporting on a PeopleSoft platform. “PeopleSoft is at end of life,” Kristen Eshleman, the Vice President of Library & Information Technology told the Tripod. Eshleman is an Executive Sponsor of the cutover, along with President Lugo, CFO Scott Jordan, and the Dean of Faculty Sonia Cardenas. “We continue to fall behind in terms of our ability to use modern technology to support modern business practice. You will notice, going into PeopleSoft, it feels very antiquated. Its very dated-looking. The system is twenty five years old.” Eshelman adds.
The new system is called Oracle Cloud, another product from the same company that owns PeopleSoft — The Oracle Corporation. The newer, Oracle Cloud system has new features such as built-in AI, more self service capabilities, and a more streamlined user experience. “Things that are very manual and paper-based now can be done entirely in the system, and that will save a lot of staff and faculty time that we hope can be better spent focusing on the student experience.” says Eshleman. Student employees were notified of the change through an email. Emma Boyce ‘27 noted several significant differences in user experience: “Mainly it’s different because we go through the Oracle website rather than right through TCOnline. Mainly it just adds an extra step to time reporting and requires waiting for a confirmation email directly from the Oracle rather than from our supervisors that our hours have been submitted properly.” Boyce said.
The Oracle Corporation has had media controversy in recent years due to their affiliation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is a “close confidant” of Oracle Co-founder Larry Ellison and Oracle CEO Safra Catz, according to Israeli news outlet Times of Israel. The decision to stay within the Oracle software family was based on a return-on-investment comparison between the platforms Workday and Oracle Cloud. “We were able to implement this program for ten million dollars less than it would have taken to implement Workday,” Eshleman told the Tripod. “You don’t come to Trinity for the way we do payroll and HR. You come to Trinity for the education, so we don’t want to spend any more money on our ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) than we have to.”
Boyce commented that from the student end of things, “There were some technical issues in the beginning with logging in and figuring out how to put down the hours I’d worked, which was stressful given the usual deadline for submitting our hours.” Eshelman expressed sympathy and understanding for student’s frustrations. “We recognize the pain, we are hearing the frustrations and seeing where there are some gaps,” she says. “I do want to reassure students that we are on top of that. We are working around the clock to make sure students have the resources that they need. We encourage students to please reach out to us and let us know where they are experiencing issues.”
The IT Help Desk can be reached via email at helpdesk@trincoll.edu
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