Executive summary

University of Chicago believed in empowering students to manage their academic path, but didn’t have the right infrastructure in place to be able to offer a student-facing, modern interface for planning and tracking degree progress. The systems they were using did not provide the transparency and visibility that they aimed to give to their students when it came to their progress and future terms. This also meant significant advising resources were spent on transactional tasks like course scheduling. That’s when the University of Chicago decided to evaluate new software that could help deliver the best student experience at scale. 

The Challenges 

In 2018, Scott Campbell, Assistant Vice President for Academic Services and University Registrar at University of Chicago, was tasked with evaluating the university’s underlying student system infrastructure. The technology was failing to adequately support staff and students, and so he set out to find a creative path forward. 

One barrier they faced with their current system was the interface was built primarily for advisors, rather than students. 

“Whenever the student would leave the adviser's office, they would just get a print out and have to go into another system and try to search for these courses and register.” - Scott Campbell, Assistant Vice President for Academic Services and University Registrar, University of Chicago

The primary goal was to find a Degree Management platform that provided a stellar experience for students to plan their degree at University of Chicago, with a dynamic and modern user interface that they’ve come to expect.

Another must - the new tool had to keep up with a frequently changing course catalog, as their current system was leading to confusion and errors. For example, a student might see a course in the course catalog and plan for it but then 3 years later it may not be offered. 

The Solution

When Scott Campbell and the Dean of Students in the College talked about the future they wanted, they knew that they wanted a self-service academic planning tool for students, but one that also made it easy to collaborate with their advisors. They needed seamless digital experiences that reflected their forward-looking institution and when they came across Stellic, the decision was a no-brainer. 

“It was truly the interface that sold us. I think that's where the [Stellic] team being recent undergraduate students themselves was a benefit. They knew what [students] needed.” - Scott Campbell, Assistant Vice President for Academic Services and University Registrar, University of Chicago

The team decided to move forward with Stellic with an aggressive timeline. Because of Stellic’s nimble and dedicated team, Scott Campbell says the implementation process was seamless and without headaches compared to other vendors.

“The highlight of the implementation was working with the team and their professionalism and responsiveness to all of our issues and concerns. They were just so helpful and and open minded.” - Scott Campbell, Assistant Vice President for Academic Services and University Registrar, University of Chicago

The Results

The Stellic planner was deployed to all 7,000 University of Chicago undergraduate students. As soon as they began the implementation process, they realized that the true transformation would come from using Stellic’s degree audit in conjunction with the planner. This would allow students to not just plan their degrees, but allow students and staff to track progress towards graduation and better understand student success metrics.  

“Once we went into the planning tool, then we realized, why don't we just go ahead and use the audit as well? It just made sense.” - Scott Campbell, Assistant Vice President for Academic Services and University Registrar, University of Chicago 

The university is now in its second year of rollout with Stellic’s degree audit and planner, and Scott Campbell says all sides of the university are equally impressed with their ability to improve student service and boost advisor effectiveness.

“Stellic has been a huge success. We have received such great feedback from both the advisors and the students.” - Scott Campbell, Assistant Vice President for Academic Services and University Registrar, University of Chicago 

With Stellic, students are now empowered to chart and explore their path at University of Chicago, having complete visibility into their degree progress towards graduation. Students are highly engaged on the easy-to-use interface, with thousands of planning activities on the platform every month.

Looking forward, Scott Campbell would like to start looking at how Stellic’s analytics tools can help the school make predictive, data-driven decisions on enrollment and registration that will drive even better student success.