Executive Summary

The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center is one of a handful of comprehensive academic health centers in the U.S. Their mission is to educate the next generation of healthcare leaders in Oklahoma. The breadth of their education offerings is expansive — 7 Colleges consist of 70 professional and graduate programs, ranging from Medicine, Dentistry, Allied Health, Pharmacology, Nursing, among many others. 

Due to the incredibly diverse curriculum and structure across the Colleges and the programs that comprise them, many traditional degree audit systems and processes can not adequately cater to their needs across the board. This meant that OUHSC was manually performing most of their degree audit and tracking processes. 

Stellic has changed this, digitizing their degree audit and academic planning processes, and bringing them together in one place. Below, we share 3 key impacts that the partnership with Stellic has brought to students and staff at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.

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1. Clarity and Transparency

Both students and administrators across OUHSC now have a clearer understanding of how their programs are structured. They can easily visualize curriculum and requirements at a glance. Students at OUHSC are able to conceptualize their journey with Pathways, helping them understand forthcoming courses and milestones in their education. Tied directly to their individual degree progress, students can understand in real-time exactly how they are progressing through their program, in a way that wasn’t before available.

"Our students say it’s awesome that they can see where they are on their journey – they’ve been really receptive to Stellic."  - Lori Klimkowski, Registrar, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center

"From a student perspective, Stellic provides a visual inventory that helps them feel like they’re making progress toward their degree." - Logan Lockhart, Director of Student Services, University of Oklahoma College of Medicine

Stellic has provided OUHSC with the flexibility to track all nuances that come with professional health science programs – many of which incorporate out-of-classroom activities into their curriculum. For instance, the Neuroscience PhD program requires its students to participate in seminars and fulfill certain milestones related to their dissertation. Displaying these non-course requirements in a student’s degree audit alongside traditional courses allows students and staff to keep track of everything in one place. 

There is also further flexibility around programs which award credit based on the time that is spent in the classroom, laboratory, or clinical rotations (also known as clock hours). Uniquely, Stellic can accommodate clock hours, traditional credit hours, and even the combination of both credit models at OUHSC — namely the MD/MPH dual degree. Now, administrators from both the College of Medicine and the College of Public Health are on the exact same page, eliminating back and forth communication about the students enrolled in that program.

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2. Operational Efficiency

In the past, graduation checking proved taxing for staff and leaders at OUHSC. It was not a simple process to conduct a degree audit, so checking for requirements was only done leading up to graduation. This posed a few challenges: the process would require queries to be run in their SIS in order to find missing grades, and because of that, the process was commonly delayed. Requirements could also fall through the cracks, and the departments would hurriedly find a way for the student to make up the course, or arrange for it to be taken at the main campus. 

Today, any administrator can see the en masse progress of students in real-time, greatly reducing the time spent in checking requirements ahead of graduation. With accurate degree audits and powerful reporting at their disposal, the requirement checking process around graduation has gone from 6-8 weeks to 2 weeks in most programs. 

"It's a beautiful, slick interface that makes it easy to quickly see what requirements are outstanding for graduating students. It also provides an easy visual check to make sure that students have the correct course enrollment throughout the degree program." - Logan Lockhart, Director of Student Services, University of Oklahoma College of Medicine

3. Confidence

Students across OUHSC are now endowed with confidence that they are fulfilling the requirements – both in and out of the classroom – that are needed for graduation. The platform has eliminated the fear that surprises will come up around commencement time. 

Taking the impact even further, students can be assured that they are meeting criteria for certain scholarships. As most of the scholarships for OUHSC students are contingent on grade and curriculum criteria, students are using Stellic to independently make sure they maintain their scholarships — they no longer need to make a trip to the Registrar’s Office to get confirmation about their status. 

“Dentistry has been our biggest College that has several different scholarships attached to it. In the past, students have come in asking for their curriculum and whether they’re on track for the scholarship. Now, we’re hearing students say 'it’s awesome' that Stellic has all the information in there instead of pulling pieces from different sources.” - Lori Klimkowski, Registrar

Reflections

The OUHSC leadership team, in particular the Registrar’s Office, has viewed Stellic as a thought-partner in achieving these impacts for their campus. Not only have their needs and expectations been met through the partnership, but the two sides have collaborated to innovate solutions that provide even more value to campus. Looking ahead, both teams are excited to deepen impacts even further for OUHSC down the line.

“The Stellic team has been there the whole time with us through this journey. Anytime we’ve asked for something, the response has been ‘let’s see what we can do because other institutions might want that too’. It’s been nothing but positive for us.” - Lori Klimkowski, Registrar