The Challenge: Doing More with Less
At the College of William & Mary, Dave Gilbert, Director of Student Accountability & Restorative Practices, faces a challenge familiar to many higher education professionals: managing comprehensive student conduct operations with limited resources. With only two full-time professional staff members serving 8,500 students, the office needed creative solutions to maintain quality services while handling complex caseloads.
"Simply put, we couldn't function without this database at William and Mary. We're very leanly staffed, so we really rely on leveraging our other personnel resources on campus to help us carry out the work."
Dave Gilbert
Director of Student Accountability & Restorative Practices, William & Mary
The Solution: Strategic Partnership and Creative Implementation
Rather than viewing their staffing constraints as limitations, William & Mary transformed their approach by maximizing Symplicity's collaborative features and building an innovative network of trained student administrators.
Empowering Student Self-Governance
Gilbert and his team developed a unique model that brings students directly into the conduct process as case administrators. "We have trained our students to help us implement some of the restorative practices, and essentially they're acting as case administrators," he notes.
This approach required robust technology that could:
Expanding Beyond Traditional Boundaries
The office now manages seven student-run honor councils through the platform, with plans to migrate all processes to Symplicity Flex. "When you said what's on the horizon? I'm really excited about Flex because one of the real big challenges for us has been managing 7 honor councils when you have multiple cases and multiple councils."
The Results: Efficiency Through Innovation
Streamlined Case Management
By implementing Flex workflows with integrated checklists, William & Mary expects to dramatically reduce administrative overhead. "At a glance, I can see what's been done because they're using the checklists, whose role, whose action step is next, whose responsibility is it, when does it need to be done," Gilbert explains.
Reduced Tool Dependencies
The enhanced file size limits and expanded functionality have eliminated the need for multiple external tools. "Because you've increased the file size limit, we don't have to use Box to share case files with students anymore," Gilbert notes. The office is also transitioning forms from Qualtrics into Flex, further consolidating their technology stack.
Enhanced Collaboration Across Campus
The platform now serves multiple departments beyond student conduct, including graduate program administrators who use it for student information lookup and case tracking. "At a minimum, they're all telling me, 'It's so much easier to look a student up in Advocate and see their student information.'"
Looking Forward: Measuring Success
Gilbert anticipates being able to demonstrate measurable improvements in case resolution timelines, particularly for graduate-level cases, within the next academic year. "What I'm hoping to be able to share in a year or two is since we moved to Flex for honor [councils], our case resolution timeline has shrunk."
Key Success Factors
Proactive Self-Sufficiency
"I really try to be as self-sufficient as possible," Gilbert explains, noting how hands-on experience with the platform has deepened his understanding of its capabilities. This approach has enabled creative problem-solving and innovative implementations.
Strong Support Partnership
The responsive client management and technical support have been crucial to their success. "I find I rarely have to wait until the next day to get an answer on something, which is great."
Strategic Feature Utilization
Gilbert emphasizes the importance of fully understanding available tools: "Sometimes we don't know what we don't know," he advises other institutions to regularly review their system utilization with their client managers.
Advice for Other Institutions
For Implementation: "Really tap into your client manager and ask them to look under the hood in your system and see what features are you using, what features are you not using, how could you use them more effectively?"
For Buy-In: "Really think about all the potential beneficiaries on your campus and then try to aggregate resources." Gilbert recommends demonstrating value across departments to build institutional support.