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Case Study
Portal System Keeps Students, Alumni in Touch at Plymouth State U
5/2/2007
By giving current students and all alumni a lifetime e-mail account accessed through a portal, Plymouth State University has enhanced its ability to stay in touch with graduates long after they leave the university.Beginning in 1999, the New Hampshire university began giving graduating seniors lifetime e-mail accounts; in 2005, with the creation of a portal called MyPlymouth.com, every alum--some 25,000 people--received a lifetime e-mail address hosted by the university, along with use of other services offered free of charge through the portal site.
Integrating Social Networking with Administration
The effect has been to strengthen the school's bond greatly with both current students and graduates. According to Joe Long, the university's director of alumni relations, the ability to stay in contact with alumni through a lifetime e-mail address has been invaluable.
"Anyone in alumni relations knows what a tough job it is to stay in touch with recent alumni," Long said. "They move an average of three times in the first two years" after graduation, he said. And, making it even harder to maintain contact, graduates often abandon e-mail addresses and create new, more professional ones as they begin to enter the job market. But with the portal and e-mail accounts, created using the Luminis Platform from Sungard, the relationship is far easier to maintain.
The university selected Luminis from SunGard Higher Education in 2000 and moved to the Banner administrative system, also from SunGard, in 2003. The student portal was created in 2003; the alumni portal was launched in 2005, and the university has continued refining the portals and adding features since.
When the university moved to the Banner administrative system, administrators considered an open source system instead, according to Kenneth Kochien, director of management information systems and instructional technology at PSU. But given the small size of the school, he said he decided that staff limitations dictated a system with more readily available support, a decision he said has paid off. PSU has been able to maintain the portal with a single system administrator, who also spends time developing new aspects of the system.
The Luminis Platform provides portal features, supporting infrastructure, and integrated applications, such as course registration and financial aid applications. Because the portal is integrated with Banner--student and alumni data in the Banner system--the system can recognize and respond appropriately as a user's status changes over time from student, to alumni. The integration also allows single signon, meaning users need to log on just once to access all the functions the system offers.
Immersing students in the portal beginning with their freshman year is key to building a lifelong relationship, according to Kochien. "The data is clear that those who attended the university since 2000, when the portal first went live, are the most active alumni users," he said. "They had a positive experience using the portal during their university years, and now they are coming back to use it as alums."
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