Ana G. Mendez University
Ana G. Mendez University partners with StudentSpace to help their students succeed and measures their success easily!
Ana G. Mendez University was founded in the late 1940s. Since its foundation, the university has remained faithful to its commitment to offer quality education for all but as the university grew in all ways, they needed more advancements in their software applications. As StudentSpace was among the top 5 companies to provide services or application software to help colleges and universities succeed, the university contacted StudentSpace and came in touch with us for all their software needs.
Objective of Ana G. Mendez University
The main objective of UAGM was to stand out for its decisive contribution to the economic and social development of the Country, providing innovative solutions to the growing needs of Puerto Rico.
Objective of Ana G. Mendez University
In their starting time, their challenge was how to get recognized as the leading institution in the service of the educational needs of Hispanic communities outside of Puerto Rico, in the United States and other communities it serves.
Another challenge of UAGM was to be characterized as a transforming entity, of constant innovation, of great financial strength and centered on the human being, making effective use of its technological, physical and managerial resources in support of its mission.
Few of the other challenges faced by UAGM:
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Earlier they were facing problem in tracking the student’s performance, as there was no proper software for tracking. Faculties, counsellors, higher managements were not aware about the student performance and other activities.
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In the initial few years they struggled in getting the accreditation.
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University was not able to assist the individual student particularly using any software service, not able to provide any kind of early alert to the students or their parents about their performance and other activities educational/social, and hence were unsuccessful to make students succeed.
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There was nothing (or no special software service) which can at least make their work of getting grants in their favour easy. To understand, it’s as simple as the university was not able to track, no proper records to keep for student’s success, students in need of financial aid, student’s performance, responsible faculty or counsellor etc.
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The university needed a tool to quickly catch the student’s falling through the cracks.
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To establish, develop, direct and supervise institutions and centers of post-secondary and higher education in Puerto Rico, the United States and abroad, that offer academic preparation to all educational levels as authorized by laws, regulations and licensing entities and corresponding accreditation.
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To establish, implement and evaluate teaching programs of the highest relevance and academic excellence, according to the needs and interests of the various sectors of the communities it serves.
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To establish, implement and evaluate continuing education, adult education and other non-traditional programs.
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To develop a leading role of service and public function for the discussion, analysis and approach of effective solutions to the social, economic and environmental challenges of the community it serves.
The reporting mega-challenge for Title III/V
StudentSpace was key in providing reports and a multi-perspective view of the institutions data for the President and all other key stake holders. Title V reports for the US department of Education were paramount without which the grant monies would be discontinued. It was not a simple task to do all the activities and then quickly report upon their success in a regular and timely manner. Since the grant depended upon these reports - StudentSpace gave Ana G. Mendez University IR department a title V in-built reporting module as a subset of the Interactive Reporting module.
That is where the Interactive Reporting module – StudentSpace’s point and run report runner provided the crucial title V reports. These easy to use practical multi-perspective views and graphs which represented different findings and insights which helped satisfy the Title V auditors.
How StudentSpace helped Ana G. Mendez University to overcome their challenges
StudentSpace helped Ana G. Mendez University by providing the following services which improved the university’s condition rather resolved most of their challenges.
Few of the StudentSpace’s services which helped Ana G. Mendez University are Student Tracking, ASL, Early Alert, Grant, Report, SQR Reports,Batch Mode of student services, Batch Mode of Advising Log, Batch Update and Admin Module.
Student Tracking- Our student tracking system is designed to track student cohorts, demographics, enrolment, academic goals, admission, multiple education plan, degree audit, attendance, generates dashboards and powerful reports.
ASL- ASL (Assessment of Student Learning) is a way to document student achievement beyond the simple traditional way of giving student’s grades and has helped universities and colleges in getting accreditation from national accreditation agencies like SACS.
Early Alert- Early Alert module allows the administrator, faculty, advisor, counselor, retention coordinator, faculty, Lab specialist, Director Learning Zone and Director online access to a student’s education records for the purpose of making a timely intervention possible.
A timely intervention facilitates the following outcomes:
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Social or behavioral problems are addressed before they become unmanageable;
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Attendance problems are noted and addressed before the student is in a failing situation;
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The chance of a successful outcome for the student is increased.
Early Alert facilitated timely communication between administrators, faculty and advisors in order to help students succeed.
Grant- In Grant Module, employee overtime work is added (Employee Name, Time In, Time Out, and Hourly Rate).
For UMET staff’s overtime work on a research or activity in the institution, a special grant is provided to him/her on hourly basis.
Report services- Our reporting system helps the higher management to get the reports generated of all the modules which therefore helps them to achieve their institutional goals and also it helps in getting the grants in their favour.
SQR Reports- It gives the assurity to the admin staff that any particular record has been saved successfully in the database.
Batch Mode of student services- Through the ‘Batch mode of Student Services’ page, the User can give same service to multiple students of different campuses together at one time.
Batch Mode of Advising log- Through the ‘Batch mode of Advising Log’ page, the User can give same Advice to multiple students of different Campuses together at one time.
Batch Update- Advisor, Counsellor, Tutor can be assigned to any particular student in different cohort and clubs (which makes the work of faculty easy and saves faculty's time).
Admin Module- It gives the control panel to the administration to make changes by themselves.
Using StudentSpace’s above mentioned few services, the university, later was able resolve all the problems they faced in their initial times. Time to time they gave us the updates on their rest other technical requirements which were all necessary for them, StudentSpace’s technical team took good care of all of those requirements as well and finally they were able to achieve their objectives and mission.
First company with an Intelligent Education Planning and Advising Tool
StudentSpace was the first company to launch the intelligent online advising tool and this combined with the Early Alert module sitting upon the basic and yet powerful student tracking system helped UAGM identify campus areas for improvement and by using the software achieved goals.
The Impact of StudentSpace
UAGM administrators got point and click reports using which they can generate the reports by themselves without disturbing the busy IT department. The advising department were independently seeking out crucial data and making decisions based upon student’s data which they could see in a timely manner.
Competency audits could be printed and shared or emailed to students. This was the first time the students had the power to continually see their audits and share with future employers if they chose to do so.
For the time the IR department could see cohort-based retention data and start to predict future trends. StudentSpace immensely helped UAGM take a quantum leap into the 21st century and get prepared to embrace and use the technologies which would come and change the education landscape completely. Overall Retention rates and completion rates of developmental students went up by 4% and set the stage for UAGM to grow further and serve the local community in a better way.