The UAA Academic Advocate Case Management System project began in May 2019 to meet the needs of the newly formed Office of Academic Advocacy of the Academic Success Center.  The Division of Information Technology (DolT) and UAA met to plan a collaborative project to build a case management system. This project was on an accelerated timeline to be completed by Fall 2019, and while it fell outside of the normal duties for most of the team members, it directly leveraged their skills and expertise. The Academic Advocates are a direct result of the UMBC Strategic Plan and contribute to the mission of Student Success.  

The project team was made up by members of DoIT including Ken Schreihofer, Manager, Business Intelligence and Student Success Technologies, Joe Kirby, Assistant Vice President, Business Systems, Frank Elmore, Software Developer, Kevin Joseph, Senior Director, Business Intelligence, Jen Moser, Developer/Analyst, Business Systems, and members of UAA including Dr. Amanda Knapp, Associate Vice Provost and Assistant Dean, and Dr. Delana Gregg, Director of Academic Learning Resources, Assessment, and Analysis.  The team worked closely and collaboratively on various parts of building a case management system using tools and systems already on campus, including the Request Tracker (RT) system and the REX Data Warehouse. 

The goal of this project was to develop a case management tool for use by the Academic Advocates in interacting with students, managing referrals and cases, tracking their actions, and effectively analyzing and reporting on their work. Similar initiatives at other schools require a high level of detail-oriented data logging and information management to allow the Academic Advocates to work at an efficient and rapid pace. A goal of the project was to deliver an effective tool to track that data, while leveraging existing campus insights into students at risk. 

Academic Advocates seek referrals from other campus partners to know when a student is in need. The referral form went live in September 2019 on the Academic Advocacy Website. The form supports options for Staff, Faculty, and self-referral. If a case exists, it will update the case with the additional referral. If one does not exist, it will create a new ticket and assign the corresponding Academic Advocate based on the student's primary college.

The outcome of this effort was to provide the Academic Advocates with the tools and insights to work effectively and at scale. There are touches that go beyond just a normal system: the Academic Advocate dashboard advises the staff member about what risk factors impact a student and how to best meet their needs. REX will automatically create tickets when a student meets a given threshold for risk.

The creation of the Office of Academic Advocacy was a result of the UMBC Strategic Plan, and is directly tied to promoting student success and better student outcomes. The system allowed the Academic Advocates to immediately jump in and track their work with students.

The Department of Human Resources would like to congratulate the group on receiving this honor.   The members of the group will receive a celebratory lunch at the Skylight Lounge, a certificate, and an invitation to the annual Service Awards Ceremony.  In addition, the group project will be added to the Job Well Done Award plaque located in the Department of Human Resources.