Streamlining ESL Student Support with the Student Success CRM

In the ever-evolving landscape of higher education, Gonzaga University has taken a significant step forward by transitioning the English Language Center (ELC) from using an Access database for tracking student information to using the Student Success CRM on the dynamic Salesforce platform. This transformation is not just a technological upgrade but a leap towards enhanced efficiency, flexibility, and integration within the university’s Zag Relationship Management (ZRM) ecosystem.

The Student Success CRM integrates seamlessly with other campus systems, including Banner, reducing redundancy for end users and ensuring all relevant departments have access to up-to-date information. Additionally, ELC faculty and staff can now collaborate more closely with colleagues in other departments, as they are leveraging the same system as many other teams on campus. The system’s scalability means it can grow with the program’s needs, offering new features and capabilities as required.

ELC Program Assistant SarahAnn Bennett described the new solution with enthusiasm.

Gonzaga's ELC serves a diverse group of students from various countries, each bringing unique cultural and linguistic backgrounds. These students are often on F-1 visas and require meticulous tracking of their academic progress and attendance to comply with immigration regulations. The program aims to provide comprehensive language education, helping students achieve proficiency in English so they can succeed in their academic and professional endeavors. This work also means additional data management tasks for ELC staff and faculty to ensure we are in compliance with various regulations.

The ELC Access database was created many years ago by a professor and operated as a homegrown solution designed to track various aspects of a student’s academic journey, including their placement scores, contact details, attendance and performance metrics.

Over time, as the program expanded, the database became difficult to maintain. The manual updates required were not scalable, leading to frequent bottlenecks and delays and adjunct instructors, who often worked remotely, had to be physically present on campus to enter data into the system.

ELC administrators also manually monitored and calculated attendance threshold percentages adding additional overhead to their processes. When a student missed too many classes, administrators manually sent email notifications to the students and relevant staff or faculty members.

Recognizing the need for a more robust and integrated system, the ELC team partnered with Information Technology Services (ITS) to identify a solution that could streamline their processes and automate tasks where possible.  

The business needs for this project were complex and the timeline was compact. To ensure the team was able to design, build, and deliver value quickly, the team adopted an agile and iterative approach, dividing the project into three phases to the project.

The first phase focused on attendance tracking, which was crucial for compliance with visa requirements. After evaluating existing solutions for attendance tracking, the team determined Banner Self-Service (via Zagweb) was the best option as it allowed for seamless data transfer from Banner to the Student Success CRM. ESL faculty were also already familiar with recording attendance in Zagweb, so utilizing an existing solution helped with end user adoption.

Phase two’s primary deliverable was the new Midterm Progress Report solution. Previously managed as separate Word documents for each student in a course, the team configured the CRM to support progress report creation directly on the student’s record. Combined with transparency into a more comprehensive student profile, student notes, and historical grades, the solution enables a more holistic evaluation of a student’s progress in a course. Historical midterm grades were also migrated from Access to Banner for reference and historical reporting.

Finally, phase three introduced several major features: the integration of attendance data from Banner to Salesforce, which enabled automated alerts for low attendance; a new form to support instructor course summaries with automated email reminders; access and visibility into historical Midterm Progress Reports in Salesforce; and a strategy for long-term historical availability of data in the Access database. In addition to the Salesforce-related enhancements, the Registrar’s Office and Institutional Research built several Power BI reports so ELC staff could more easily visualize data points.

The final solution provides ELC faculty and staff with a holistic view of their students’ progress and performance and sets them up to be more proactive in addressing at-risk indicators within their program. For example, if a student needs to extend their visa, the data needed to support the extension request is easily available in one place, rather than across multiple systems. Additionally, advisors and instructors can share information in one place, providing a more streamlined and predictable experience for the students they support.

To ensure the ELC team had the knowledge and skills to be successful using the new CRM functionality, Bennett, alongside the ELC Director, Nicholas David, underwent significant training. Their approach was to learn the skills needed to then become trainers for other ELC faculty and staff.

“The training that [faculty] are going to need to go through in order to be able to work here is not going to be so significantly separate from what they would need to do with the rest of the university,” David said. “And so that’s going to be really helpful.”

Reflecting on the positive impacts of this change, Bennett appreciated the support from the project team and the clear communication throughout the process. She also recognizes the university’s commitment to leveraging technology to enhance education to help with the “little things” that enhance support for students with diverse needs.

The project was sponsored by Associate Provost Christina Isabelli. The core project team included Juliya Fox, Peggy Noble, Ram Yadlapalli, Vipul Saxena, MJ Spadafora, and Lyle Spencer from ITS, as well as SarahAnn Bennett and Nick David from ELC.