Seton Hill University

Collaboration as a Driver of Student Success

Collaboration between Student Affairs and Information Technology has led to significant opportunities to increase efficiency and effectiveness, while increasing communication understanding and appreciation of the humanity of each other's roles and functions. The COVID-19 pandemic was a catalyst for increased collaboration, as IT Leadership came to work alongside Health Services and Residence Life staff to maximize software for tracking positive patients, tests, vaccinations, communications, etc.

Those conversations and partnerships, led to additional sharing of pain points with software and outdated processes across functional areas. From an administrative perspective, we worked together to create a process for recurring updates of campus-wide Emergency Contact Information, as well as a quarterly testing of our Emergency Alert system.

We then moved to identifying tools that could be used for support of At-Risk students, assisting in measuring academic progress, and soliciting feedback from students. Through each review and subsequent adoption, IT and Student Affairs sat side-by-side to understand what the impact could be for the students, as well as understand the needs of a student service professional and technology professional perspective.

Examples of Integrations of systems

● COVID catalyst- when you ask nurses to do data analytics, they might need some help.

• Tracking and reporting system, contact tracing

• SaferMe - the Covid app

● Process to update Emergency Contact information semesterly

● Campus-Wide Alert system, added quarterly tests

● Starfish

● Signal Vine

● EdSights

● Cancelled SHINE to instead use current MySHU platform

● ARMS and Teamworks (Athletics)

● HUDL cams, golf simulator

● Simplicity Advocate

● Policy tracking system

● T2 - permits and parking tickets

● Remote ID Photo

● Blue lights/emergency towers – now with security cameras 

● Video door entrances/doorbell

● Shuttle tracker

● Campus safety feature - license plate recognition...any license plates flagged in state system come to campus, PD gets alerted

● Digital signage

Building a More Connected Student Experience

● Continual improvement and collaboration overall

• Staff can now serve students much quicker, as we have up to date information at our fingers

● We were able to better support students of concern through the adoption of both the Starfish and EdSights platforms, as well as through the use of Signal Vine

● We were better able to positively support and promote engagement through the Starfish kudos element, and eliminated a former platform we used for Engagement. We eliminated a tertiary system in favor of publicizing student organizations, clubs and activities in an existing system with greater functionality in a platform that students were already using.

Aligning Campus Teams Around Shared Goals

● University Strategic Plan is primary driver, and that was created through campus-wide participation

● Goals for individual projects are discussed openly and early across teams during initial conversations, and then we work side-by-side during vendor demos to ensure platforms meet the needs of all stakeholders.

• IT assists Student Affairs in developing requirements for new systems and projects which allows IT to prevent duplication in systems as well as investigate potential vendors early in the process to eliminate any who could not integrate easily within our system. 

Measuring the Impact of Collaboration

● Cost savings ($35,000) through the elimination of a platform that was added into something we already had

• MySHU Communities: 83 active “Club” communities, 2930 members (there are duplicates if students are in more than 1), 216 students have joined communities since 8/1

● Better integration of systems

• Minimizing manual reworking of data

• Minimize duplication of systems

● Higher satisfaction from Student Affairs staff of the software, including better understanding of software capabilities

● Deeper understanding of each other’s work, which simply leads to increased morale and a sense of support for your colleagues. That has been a wonderful ripple effect from this work together. 

Preparing for the Next Phase of Student and Staff Success

● Implementation will begin on new Res Life software

● Campus-wide key software tracking

• Facilities, Res Life, and all personnel will benefit from this

● Leveraging and maximizing current technologies for retention and persistence. We just completed year 1 with EdSights and we look forward to even more learning with it. 

● GrubHub Campus 

● NFC for card access (so they can use their phones instead of ID cards) + facial recognition card access in some places (FieldHouse)