This spring, Simmons Technology, Undergraduate Advising, Student Life, and the Registrar’s Office are working to launch a new centralized platform for Student Advising—Starfish. Starfish is an Integrated Planning & Advising System (IPAS) that will make it more convenient for students to access support resources, manage advising appointments, and respond to advising “to-dos.”

Starfish will also enable faculty and student support staff to access records in one consolidated location, direct students to resources, access photo rosters, and communicate more easily between offices. Using a single system means more effective referrals and timelier outreach to students. In addition, it will help the College to continually improve programming centered on advising. This is a long-needed system that will greatly improve our ability to support students in meeting their educational goals.

At first, this software will be available for Undergraduate students and our Online Social Work and Online Nursing programs. Once launched, we will begin to expand into other disciplines. We are hard at work configuring this software and creating the policies and procedures to make its launch possible. To learn more about the project and its goals, please visit our project web site.