Ad Astra® helps you find the space you already own

Smart Scheduling™ helps institutions improve campus space utilization and manage events more efficiently

Today, colleges and universities are navigating a complicated campus space equation. Enrollment pressures and changing student needs are reshaping how institutions think about their physical footprint, while financial pressures are making it harder to simply add more space to solve capacity challenges.

In fact, many institutions are already moving in the opposite direction. A CampusIQ/Huron survey found that a majority of universities have exited leases, canceled construction, or demolished buildings since 2021. As campuses reassess how much space they need — and where they need it — making the most of existing facilities becomes increasingly important.

Whether an institution is managing growing demand, a changing enrollment mix, or a shrinking physical footprint, the challenge is the same: how do you get more value from the space you already have?

The answer is not simply adding more square footage. It is finding smarter ways to manage and schedule the spaces, facilities, and resources already available.

The hidden challenges behind campus space

Event and space scheduling may look like a simple matter of finding an open room. In reality, every request can involve multiple departments, stakeholders, deadlines, policies, resources, and competing priorities. A department wants to request a room. Someone needs to review it. Another person needs to approve it. Facilities needs to know what resources are required. An event changes at the last minute. A different group needs the same space.

For event and facilities teams, that can mean spending valuable time pursuing information, routing requests, answering questions, resolving conflicts, and manually keeping everyone updated.

The result isn't just more work for scheduling teams. It can also mean slower approvals, frustrated campus partners, unnecessary conflicts, and less visibility into how campus resources are actually being used.

The smarter way to schedule

A modern approach to scheduling starts by making day-to-day work easier.

For event and facilities teams, that means less time spent managing the mechanics of a request and more time focused on the event itself. Requests, approvals, availability, resources, and changes should be easy to see and manage from one place — without relying on email chains, spreadsheets, phone calls, or manual workarounds. 

For students, staff and campus partners, it means a straightforward way to find available spaces, submit requests, understand requirements, and track progress without having to learn a complicated process or wait for a scheduler to provide an update.

And when everyone has better visibility into the process, schedulers can move events forward faster while maintaining the policies, approvals, and controls their institution's requirements.

Synergies in event and space optimization

• Modern; easy to use interface for individuals that does not require end user training.
• Simpler event requests that make it easier for departments to find and request the right space.
• Configurable workflows and permissions that route requests to the right people without unnecessary handoffs.
• Real-time visibility into availability, requests, approvals, and scheduling changes.
• Conflict-aware scheduling that helps identify double-bookings and other conflicts before they become problems.
• Self-service access that gives campus partners the information they need without creating additional work for scheduling teams.
• Public calendars that make it easier to communicate events and availability across campus.
  
  

Smart Scheduling in action

Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois, experienced the benefits of a smarter approach when it transitioned to Ad Astra's modern scheduling platform.

In August 2025, Dominican adopted a single-source approach to centralize event and room management inside one intuitive, modern interface. Enhanced transparency around the scheduling process included customized lead times, permissions by user/partner, flexible workflows, multiple calendar views, and public registrations and calendars — all set up without a lengthy learning curve for the campus partners using it day to day.

That ease of adoption showed up quickly in how people actually used it. As Hannah Wald, Dominican's event services system coordinator, explained, "Having information and training at their fingertips has resulted in huge improvements in regard to how users follow our event guidelines." Rather than routing every question back to her team, campus partners could find what they needed inside the platform itself.

The process also benefited academic scheduling, with fewer courses occupying nonacademic spaces, and gave users an improved, self-service understanding of the resources and steps required to plan events — no separate instruction manual or training session required.

“ Ad Astra's events scheduling makes my job incredibly easy because it gives me more control over the deadlines of when people can go into the platform to request different spaces. It also allows me to look at the workflow of different campus partners, so there is always time to schedule resources correctly."

Hannah Wald, Event Services System Coordinator, Dominican University

Get more from every resource

With self-service requesting, configurable workflows, intuitive calendars, and conflict validation, scheduling teams can spend less time managing the challenges of space and more time ensuring every event and activity is successful.

Because Ad Astra connects directly with major student information systems, including Jenzabar, Banner by Ellucian, Workday, Colleague by Ellucian, and Oracle PeopleSoft Campus Solutions, schedulers aren't stuck cross-referencing data by hand or re-entering the same information twice.

It's a more efficient way to manage campus events, and a more informed way to manage the space behind them. By connecting people, processes, spaces, and resources, institutions can maximize utilization, improve collaboration, and make smarter use of the facilities they already have.

Because when space is limited, the smartest solution isn't just more space.

It's a smarter way to schedule it.