Roberts Wesleyan College is a Christian liberal arts college located near Rochester, New York. With a mix of traditional and adult education students, Roberts offers 60 plus majors and has a student body of nearly 2,000.
Before DocuWare, admissions and registration records were stored in file cabinets in the College’s main office, and they were running out of storage space. Sharing information between departments in buildings across campus and determining whether you were working with the most current version of a document was difficult. The College’s management team also wanted to more easily meet privacy requirements outlined in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) by limiting information access automatically. Reducing printing and storage costs, as well as help increase enrollment by simplifying the admissions process were their other goals.
Integrating DocuWare with AdmitGold admissions software solved a major workflow issue
The Admissions Department needed to store prospective students’ applications, transcripts, letters, ACT and SAT scores. The Department is now able to securely store them as they are submitted through the College’s admission software, AdmitGold, which is integrated with DocuWare. The staff enters the prospective student ID that is generated by AdmitGold, the document type and date. The remaining index fields such as first and last name, and major are automatically populated using the ID number as a match code. Once all the required documents have been received, a workflow process routes an admissions evaluation form to the admissions counselor and then to the admissions director for approval. An electronic stamp is then used to mark the applicant as accepted or denied.
The Registrar’s Office uses DocuWare to store change of major request forms, transcripts, academic alerts, FERPA forms and other information. Every piece of information is now available in one central system.
A centralized, secure student database speeds up multiple processes
With the new system in place, the College is consolidating information and allowing faculty advisors to have controlled access to information in DocuWare, based on a student’s major. This has eliminated storing student information in multiple locations and ensured everyone refers to the most current document. Having one universal database gives the staff the tools they need to answer questions quickly, thereby decreasing student frustration.
“Before DocuWare, we would have to schedule a meeting to determine if a student could receive transfer credit. Today this is done virtually with a predefined workflow, saving time and clearing excess meetings from staff schedules,” College President Deanna Porterfield explains. “DocuWare gives us the framework to meet our goal of increasing enrollment. Our workflow is simple and transparent, speeding admissions processing time and allowing us to simplify things for our students,” Porterfield concludes.
