At Texas State University, freshmen enrollments have increased by 8 percent between 2014 and 2016. This year, they welcomed more than 6,000 first-year students to campus. Enrollment and registration staff anticipated that this positive growth might result in capacity challenges for their team. Hiring more advisors and staff wasn’t a realistic option, but they knew how important personalized attention is to help new students begin their college careers confidently and thrive later in their academic journeys.
“To make enrollment sustainable, we had to find a way to empower each new student to choose the right courses and to optimize their journey toward a degree at Texas State,” said Martha Fraire-Cuellar Associate University Registrar. “We saw an opportunity to do this at the point of registration, by enabling a three-person registration team and 17 PACE advisors to orient, advise and register more than 6,000 students in an eight-week window.”
With Civitas Learning’s course scheduling solution, Martha can now pre-register up to 1,000 students in a single day. This was impossible to accomplish without the Civitas Learning Student Impact Platform. With line of sight into course demand and availability in advance of bottlenecks, Martha’s team can also now spend more time collaborating with academic departments to optimize course/sections scheduling and maximize capacity planning.
“We can see which course sections are filling up and predict which ones we’ll need to open additional sections for ahead of time,” said Fraire-Cuellar. “This is a critical signal in support of our efforts to enhance course offerings and students’ educational journeys. Not to mention that Texas State University is ranked #1 for space utilization in the state — an indicator of our continued improvements navigating the scheduling process from administrative and student perspectives.”
Additionally, 17 advisors working with students around orientation are able to focus conversations with students about what it will take for them to succeed. They no longer need to spend time building schedules.
“We can see which course sections are filling up and predict which ones we’ll need to open additional sections for ahead of time,” said Fraire-Cuellar. “This is a critical signal in support of our efforts to enhance course offerings and students’ educational journeys. Not to mention that Texas State University is ranked #1 for space utilization in the state — an indicator of our continued improvements navigating the scheduling process from administrative and student perspectives.”
