When Laura Craig joined Delaware Valley University nearly three years ago, she faced a challenge familiar to many career services professionals: critical student communications were siloed, inconsistent, and nearly impossible to track.
"It was incredibly difficult for me," Laura recalls. "I use the term 'face-meltingly difficult' a lot—to just understand what was going on, who had talked to the student when, and what the student knew."
The issue was particularly acute around DelVal's experiential learning (EL) requirement. Communications happened only between individual staff members and students with no central documentation. As graduation approached each year, students would suddenly realize they hadn't met requirements, creating stressful situations for everyone involved.
Despite being a Symplicity client for over 10 years, DelVal wasn't fully leveraging the platform's capabilities... until now.
Drawing on her 17 years of experience with Symplicity across multiple institutions, Laura implemented a comprehensive strategy. First, she cleaned up over 17,000 student accounts to ensure accurate communication with the current student population. Then she turned to Campaign Manager—a feature she had never fully utilized in previous roles.
Laura identified a critical intervention point: students who had completed initial coursework and earned significant credits but hadn't progressed on their E360 (Experience360) requirement. She built targeted campaigns with clear, action-oriented messaging.
The results were remarkable:
"I tried really hard to be very clear with subject lines and what do you need to do—what's your action step—to make that communication very student-oriented," Laura explains.
The systematic approach proved its value when a student who had walked in commencement reached out asking about their diploma. The university discovered the student hadn't met their EL requirement. Using Campaign Manager's BCC functionality and system messages, Laura's team had a complete audit trail of all communications.
"It allowed us to really lay the groundwork for a pretty frank conversation," Laura explains. "We could say, 'This is how we know you haven't met this requirement. So let's talk about what that solution is.'"
The situation that once would have required searching through email was handled systematically, with the student ultimately meeting their requirement.
"We're much less often taken by surprise of students who are having trouble meeting requirements," Laura says. "We've made it a very systematic process that's a lot easier to handle."
Laura's supervisor noted that the spring graduation period "went a lot smoother than he would have expected," which is particularly appreciated during such a busy time.
DelVal has now expanded their Symplicity use to include career fair registration with integrated payments, First Destination Survey management, on-campus tabling, and enhanced employer engagement tracking.