Heroes of the Schedule

Report Hero: Sandi Herrera

Institution: Collin College

Location: McKinney, Texas

Undergraduate Student Population: 52,800

Campuses: Celina, Farmersville, Frisco, McKinney, Plano, Technical, and Wylie

Collin College streamlined its registration process across seven campuses, exchanging Excel sheets and post-it notes for streamlined, reliable data and dynamic, actionable visuals. 

Ad Astra gives institutions the tools and resources they need to meet the goal of prioritizing student scheduling needs.

Foundational Approach  

After several years of successfully using Ad Astra's legacy platform, Herrera saw an opportunity to improve Collin College’s registration process by moving to Ad Astra's data-informed scheduling solution, which included a registration tracking and collaboration tool. Registration Monitoring informs where registration is at any given time, while Astra Schedule allows the support team to see room and resource scheduling options. 

The implementation of Registration Monitoring also offered campus leadership a dynamic way to eliminate the paper trail and reduce inconsistencies created through the use of Excel sheets and post-it notes.

DATA-INFORMED DECISION MAKING 

Convincing campus leadership to embrace the benefits of Registration Monitoring started with sharing the “why.” Herrera had to make a case for why using this capability was better than their current approach. She reasoned that Monitor provides immediate access to the historical and current registration data and includes dynamic visualizations. Herrera’s primary purpose was to equip Collin’s campus leadership teams with an efficient tool to guide enrollment management and foster a culture of data-informed decision-making. Her confidence in the system prompted a pilot program that brought together Ad Astra and leadership from Collin College’s largest campus. 

To further boost the pilot’s success, Herrera created informational packets for the training sessions and offered a workshop for users to try Registration Monitorin and ask questions. Just one semester following the successful pilot, Collin College launched Monitor across all 11 campuses.

At-Your-Fingertip Access 

Now, use of Registration Monitoring at Collin College is a daily occurrence for deans and associate deans in the weeks leading up to registration. Color-coded section bullets inform decision-making, offering insight regarding the addition or cancellation of a course and the ability to see the enrollment on those dates. One feature that’s quickly becoming a favorite is the ability to store conversations as part of the historical data. 

New reporting capabilities are also helping optimize the process. Favorite reports include the Seat Fill Utilization Analysis and Schedule Change Tracking, which offer dynamic visuals of the dates sections were edited in order to take a deeper dive into the registration process. This is coupled with high use of the Enrollment Ratio Comparison report, tracking courses at Collin’s two new campuses that are also offered on older campuses. Regular use of Registration Monitoring is also helping Herrera become more technically inclined to view and implement the data in new and better ways.