I was an Associate Director of Admissions at a small, private, catholic HBCU in Louisiana when we were notified by our VP that funding had passed to secure Slate! This was incredibly exciting for our team who was managing the complex daily tasks of admissions in several ad hoc programs. Each required its own log-in and password, training, and had sensitive data passing between platforms. This was also paralleled with new leadership and transitions in staffing that took with it institutional knowledge. I distinctly remember the “Slate Announcement” email date because it was July 6th (the start of the Fiscal year) and we were booking tickets the next day for Slate Launch pad in Portland, Oregon for July 22nd with goals to implement and launch the new Application by August 1 for the upcoming application cycle! While ambitious and thrilling, it was a great lesson in the hidden parts of an implementation that often get overlooked.

Shortly after attending SLATE Launchpad, our Director of Admissions left the institution. As the newly appointed Slate Captain, I found myself using a strategic, technical, and functional lens to guide decision making. This part is guided in tools and templates in the Slate Implementation process. What is less guided was the deep diving into our own internal policies and procedures for discovery before initiating the process. While also implementing SLATE, I found myself overwhelmed with navigating FIVE processes simultaneously. If I had the time, runway, and capacity to do it all over again, here are the five steps I would firm up to support a smooth Slate Implementation

In this photo: Carlos Gooden’s Office Whiteboard in New Orleans, LA (July 2017)

Step 1: Documentation:

What Has Been Happening: Document the Current Process, Policies, and Procedures

Eventually, with the help of a consultant, I facilitated the process of gathering operating documents to define procedures began to slow implementation progress. We began collecting everything from admissions policies (external and internal), to academic policies, handbooks, catalogs, university policy and procedures so that we could ground our decision making in compliance. This included documenting the student journey or “the life of an application.” What we learned was there was no consensus on how a student goes from Lead to Prospect, much less Admitted to Enrolled. The answer varied depending on who you asked! Although timely and tedious, the project proved fruitful for future implementation tasks. With Carnegie Slate Solutions, this would have been a much easier heavy lift. With proven tools and templates, tested in the field and optimized for functionality, I could have saved a minimum three weeks of our time dedicated to the project.

2: Design

What can Slate do? How will Slate manage, support, or augment this process?

A new toy! Let’s open it up and read the instruction manual. In essence, we knew at a high level what it could do, but conceptualizing independently required a lot of time in manuals, google docs, videos, and Slate Community Forums. Slate Launchpad is less about helping you implement, more so how to use the tools to facilitate your own implementation process. Once back on campus, it feels like a mountain of documents are on your desk to read. We had a point of contact (Project Implementation Manager) but it wasn’t the same as having someone really part of the team.

Simultaneously, your colleagues are eager to hear from you on how this will impact their work and when. With Carnegie Slate Solutions, it takes out all of the guessing. With guided mentorship from credible experts with backgrounds in Admissions, IT, Marketing, and Enrollment Management, you’ll find a strong cross-section of industry experts who can help articulate the functionality of Slate to a wide variety of stakeholders. Remember those documents collected in Step 1? Now take those and plug them into how SLATE will automate those processes for you (while also using policies are rules). Carnegie Slate Solutions our team of 70+ team members who word on Slate are here to walk you through the process.

3: Dream

What are the new trends in the field that may shape policies and procedures? What are the university goals and expectations for how SLATE should embrace new initiatives?

Every institution has a passion project that they’ve always wanted to implement. For some it’s an extremely laborious and manual task that we just wish we could automate somehow. Slate not only marked our office shift to a paperless operation (no more printed admissions letters with “Decision Release!” but by November our VP of Enrollment Management had two futuristic goals for us:

A) GPA Calculation: No more recalculating weighted/unweighted GPA’s by hand for admission and scholarship purposes

B) Scholarship Calculation: The goal was to standardize a formula within forms to automate this manual process

How did we solve these? You guessed it. A third consultant. Not the auditing consulting from Step 1 (Strategic), not the Slate Project Implementation Manager (Operational), but an independent contractor with a strong technical background for using fields and prompts and hidden fields in prompts to calculate scholarship models. No pen! No Paper! He was fantastic, but with Carnegie Slate Solutions, there would have been a seamless transition to this project. Why? They would have already had our policies and procedures on-hand. This goal would have been built into our implementation plan in advance with strategic input from the VP and documented as a deliverable. That’s the advantage of working with a comprehensive partner like Carnegie. Carnegie is a group of proven system thinkers with expertise across the higher education spectrum from marketing to enrollment. We think like you. One partner, one company, several solutions towards supporting a seamlessly comprehensive implementation.

4: Deliver

How do we build this process in Slate? Test it? Who needs to be involved?

Once the past, (documentation), present (design), and future (dream) steps are complete it’s time to officially build this new process and procedure with all factors considered. This is where true change management occurs and is guided strategically by all stakeholders from the Strategic Lens, Functional Lens, and Technical Lens. Imagine it is time to go live but suddenly you can’t get your data to import into Banner. The file simply will not push. it turns out, your institution has created many workarounds in banner that the traditional fields where data is mapped, are not being used by the Slate File Template. Essentially, Slate is trying to talk to Banner but your instance is in a different language than what Slate speaks. In our case, we were lucky to have an IT person embedded under the Enrollment Management Division who became the whisperer for change management. She spoke the language of Slate, IT, Admissions, Registrar, Financial Aid, and Institutional Research all who were impacted by the lack of admissions data tracking. This discovery in our SIS impacted downstream data processes for campus-wide reporting purposes and the ability for Financial Aid to match ISIRs.

*In this Photo: Actual Footage of IT Staff in Slate Implementation*

With Carnegie Solutions, you reduce the risk of error at this most critical step. With over 175+ successful implementations, we can’t say that we’ve seen it all, but we’ve seen the most! We are Slate’s longest established preferred Partner and have both a comprehensive grasp on Slate Implementation that is narrowly tailored to your institutional context. With a large undertaking, mistakes will happen and surprises will occur. With Slate Carnegie Solutions, you’ll have bi-weekly meeting

5: Delegate

How do we empower staff to feel comfortable learning, managing, and taking ownership of this process?

The answer is training. The answer is documentation. The answer is on-going engagement. The answer is obvious but many times you simply just do not have the time to put together the documentation while you’re actually in the weeds of doing. We all know this reality very well. Furthermore, these priorities are competing with supervising campus tours, helping admissions counselors plan college fair travels, and planning the Fall Open House! This is all occuring while the VP is in budget prep season and preparing for an upcoming board meeting. This is all occurring while IT is facilitating a campus wide website migration (which also impact admissions websites). With Carnegie Slate Solutions, we are proud of the team solely dedicated to make sure your institution has the most up to date information and trainings on how to use Slate. Our Client Enablement team is here to make sure it’s not just an installation, but a sustainable Implementation where the institution is confidently operating independently. Our goal is to make you not need us anymore!

*Slate Summit: June 2018 Chicago, IL Presentation*

These feel oversimplified in five bullet points, but it’s important to know that this was the process for the several moving parts and components of Slate Implementation. Although there are only, 8 functional modules, embedded within each are decisions that must be unpacked, discussed, vetted, documented, and taken through a shared governance process before decisions can be made While you may be on Step 2 of GPA Calculation, you’re simultaneously on Step 5 training staff on how to upload materials in Slate. Although this is my story, this is the reality of implementation at most institutions, and this is the reason why Carnegie Slate Solutions exist. With Carnegie, you are not alone. You have a partner. You have support.

In summary, with Carnegie Slate Solutions you’ll have peace of mind and…

Expertise: 70+ Dedicated Slate Team Members
Credibility: Longest Slate Preferred Partner
Partnership: Embedded Slate Captain
Perspective: Thinking Strategic, Technical and Functional
Tailored Solutions:
Comprehensive Options:
Sustainability and Enablement: Long Term Progress Implementation, Not Just Installation

Let’s get started today: Speak with a Specialist

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