Taking Deep Advantage
Mercersburg Academy has an educational tradition that traces back to 1836, and a mission to provide an environment of intellectual and personal transformation for its 433 boarding and day students. With a goal of developing global citizens who are “more fulfilled, more awake, more alive,” this community is a home to students from 28 states and 28 countries. The 300-acre campus with easy access to Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Maryland, provides extraordinary personal space.
Eric Hicks, who has been registrar for the last eight of his 16 years at Mercersburg, described one of the school’s significant cultural systems this way:
“We have a large number of international students. It’s a real plus. I enjoy seeing kids forge close relationships with students from around the world, it gives them a neat perspective. One of our traditions is the sit-down, family-style lunch. Students are randomly assigned to a different faculty member’s table every two weeks, so they mix with people they may not have known before. You get the flavor of how people are.”
This random mingling of faculty and students has an underlying structure powered by a customization of KEYSTONE.
Eric continued, “We use FileMaker to do these assignments, of course. Trying to do random table assignments without FileMaker would be a nightmare; but with the script we have written, it takes just a few minutes.”
Every registrar knows how complicated and time-consuming it can be to process grades and comments several times a year. Hicks reported that Mercersburg Academy has eliminated the time delay and drudgery associated with this task. Originally, he used a customization of KEYSTONE that was linked with their First Class email server. As of fall 2009, they will push data out to parents using KEYSTONE’s Family Access Module (FAM), and Broadcaster, the email system built in to KEYSTONE.
“The installation of FAM will make the process of communicating with parents so much easier—easier for the school, and easier for the parents. We used to print out comments and grades, then mail them home. Then we created a script to collate the grades and comments, create a PDF file, and send them out to the First Class family email accounts. Now, with FAM, we’ll push grades and comments out to families through the web.”
Hicks sees the benefits of this customization as significant: “Since moving grades and comments to the web, service from the Registrar’s Office is much more timely: in the past, sometimes the grades we mailed at Thanksgiving break did not arrive until after the students had returned to campus. Now parents may receive comments and grades before the student arrives home, so the discussion can be face-to-face. The web is accessible from anywhere, even if parents are traveling. We are saving time, paper, postage—and providing better service to our families. Once you get it set up, it is very convenient. It improves communication all around.”
The data sharing across campus, beyond the usual functions of the registrar’s office, is extensive. Some departments need full access; others need only their own satellite files that “peek in” to the main database. The athletics department is linked, as is the Dean’s office. Dorms and the fitness center use satellite files to track students signing in and out. The Testing Service Coordinator, who works with learning differences, is linked, as is the health center. The only offices that do not connect directly are the business office and the development office, both of which use Blackbaud. Hicks has written a script so development can migrate its own data from KEYSTONE without assistance. For the last seven years, the alumni office has been able to pull information about a student’s extracurricular activities, so that moving forward they will be able to identify potential donors based on their interest in particular activities such as athletics or the arts.
With such extensive customizations, has it been difficult to manage upgrades?
“We have done lots of customizations,” Hicks explained, “but the process of upgrading our systems to new versions has not been a problem. Every now and then, it is helpful to revisit your scripts and your file structure and organization. You can then say to yourself, ‘Let’s start again.’ We have been able to take advantage of new features in the software that make a particular action less complicated. Now, since you can drop tables onto any file, it is easy to create a satellite that just peeks in; it’s just tied to an ID. It’s painless. Our table-seating file even has the ability to adjust for students who have withdrawn or been added, it’s all synchronized. Our data is as fresh as it can be.”
Hicks took a thoughtful pause before he added this advice to potential clients: “What’s really neat about the iR solutions is that they are open files. You really do have the ability to customize and add on. I have never heard Blackbaud or other platforms described this way. There’s a huge advantage with inRESONANCE because, in the end, it’s just FileMaker, which really does allow the files to conform to the way your institution works.”
