Last year, in response to needs expressed by faculty and staff advisors across the campus, eight software solutions for Advising and Student Engagement were identified and evaluated. The Selection Committee consisted of more than 15 individuals, including administrators, faculty from the three colleges, advising groups, the registrar’s office, and staff and students from seven programs/departments.

The committee identified critical attributes needed to support both our current advising process and our desired future state of advising on campus. Each of the software options were evaluated after a live demonstration and scored based on the critical attributes. A second scoring round was done with the top three options, and live demos were open to all campus faculty and staff. Each finalist also went through an ITS security review and an accessibility review.  

As a result of this collaborative, extensive effort, we are excited to announce that our campus will be moving forward with implementing Slate as our new Advising and Student Engagement software solution.  Although Slate is currently being used by other departments on campus, this will be a new iteration and implementation and involve software designed specifically for advising and student engagement. Currently, the implementation team is recruiting support and collecting data about the advising process and experience to begin shaping our campus iteration of Slate for advising. The first phase will focus on designing the dashboard; the second phase will involve small groups piloting the software and then onboarding the campus as a whole.  

For questions about this post please email oaavp@humboldt.edu.