Higher Ed Award Snapshot: Maryville University Leads in Student Systems and Services

How Maryville University Won a Campus Technology Impact Award

Our customer Trailblazers are not only driving student success across their own campuses – they’re also receiving industry recognition for their continued innovation and impact to the broader Higher Ed community. Take Maryville University, an Education Cloud customer for four years and the latest recipient of a Campus Technology Impact Award in Student Systems and Services. The award honors exemplary colleges and universities that are making an extraordinary impact with technology on campus, doing important work in the service of teaching, learning, administration, and operations.

Here’s how Maryville’s open-source applications for admission solution, built on the Salesforce platform, went from campus changemaker to an industry leader in this week’s Higher Ed Award Snapshot.

A Need for A Flexible Application for Admissions Solution

It’s no secret that every institution has multiple types of student applications – from undergraduate studies to transfers, graduate school, international students and more. Given the costs associated with having an application solution for every student type and application need, most institutions have had to resort to a one-size-fits-all approach.

Looking to solve this challenge, Maryville University built the Enterprise Application Solution for Yield (EASY) as a free, open-source application solution that any institution can use. Built on the Salesforce platform and leveraging Salesforce Communities as the applicant interface, EASY can be personalized to the applicant and customized to the program for which an applicant is applying.

How Does EASY work?

EASY is a flexible application builder designed so that various departments across an institution can control their own application experience. Each department can make changes in the EASY application builder without having to rely heavily on an IT department for updates to existing application questions or an application flow. Institutions that use EASY can create multiple, distinct applications and leverage different options for branding.

The Application Review feature in EASY empowers users to take action on each application in a single view. By combining an applicant’s data with the ability to rate and provide decisions in one place, users can eliminate the need to toggle between multiple systems. EASY also streamlines the applicant experience. Applicants can simply start an application instead of having to create a new account, which is often a main barrier that many institutions see with each new applicant pool. With a dynamic checklist at their fingertips, each applicant can easily track their progress and see what application materials they still need to submit.

Application Review brings together on one screen all application data and fields needed for readers to make a recommendation/decision.

Central New Mexico Community College’s styled checklist shows the applicant which requirements are still incomplete, cutting down on inquiries to the department.

What Sets EASY Apart?

What’s unique about EASY is that it’s native to the Salesforce platform and is free to anyone that uses Salesforce. As an open-source solution, anyone who uses EASY can change the source code to customize the solution to meet their institution or department needs. EASY also includes the ability to turn on/off application cancellation and application withdrawal, two processes that are often not accommodated in current application solutions. Institutions can also include housing applications, event registrations, and other processes/forms as part of the application process so that students only have one place to return to and complete their onboarding.

The Impact

The impact of EASY is extending beyond the original use case of just applications for admission. There are institutions using EASY for adjunct faculty applications, study abroad applications and faculty grant applications as well. Since EASY is set up to be an application and not just a form builder, it is purpose-built for review and decision-making processes across multiple use cases within an institution. As such, institutions see the biggest impact on budget since EASY provides a flexible and multi-use platform that can be used across campus in many ways. Admissions offices have also seen a reduction in email and phone calls from applicants asking if they’ve received their materials due to EASY’s simple application checklist.

As President Lombardi states, “Everything in the classroom should be challenging. Everything outside of that is a service, and it should be easy.” Maryville University is truly driving innovation across Higher Ed and democratizing technology for all.

On behalf of Salesforce.org, congratulations to President Lombardi and the entire Maryville University team!

To get inspired about how you can transform your campus, please visit salesforce.org/highered or download this e-book to learn from other higher ed institutions that are transforming the student journey with Salesforce.