University of California – Davis is a public research university, as well as one of the 10 campuses of the University of California (UC) system. It is located in Davis, CA serving approximately 36,441 students. UC Davis has been using Advocate by Symplicity since 2012.
Highlights
- UC Davis Office of Student Support and Judicial Affairs (OSSJA) went from using Advocate to minimally track cases to implementing an entire adjudication and record-keeping workflow.
- OSSJA used the Letters Module to draft and send all disciplinary letters to students, which led them to track and resolve cases more efficiently.
- The school set up user groups and special permissions for case managers and student housing staff to view and report cases through the system based on a specific incident type.
- Advocate allowed conduct staff to streamline many of their processes by automating their follow-ups with students and providing a one-stop shop for conduct violations all over campus.
Quick Stats:
- 4 full-time judicial officers
- 54 Advocate users
- 1400+ academic conduct cases per year
- 3000+ reports per year
- One centralized system for student misconduct and residence hall violations
Background
The Office of Student Support and Judicial Affairs (OSSJA) at UC Davis had been an Advocate client since 2012 but was not using the software to its full potential. The system was being used to schedule meetings with students and upload disciplinary contracts, but no workflows were set up to track data trends and generate and send decision letters through the system.
“It allows staff to work faster; you know someone can type out a disciplinary agreement in five minutes, and that's a lot faster than having to retype it"
Shawn Knight,
Judicial Affairs Officer, Office of Student Support and Judicial Affairs (OSSJA)
Opportunity
The OSSJA staff realized the opportunity to streamline many of their processes though Advocate, so they began customizing the system to match to their ongoing processes. They implemented the Appeals Module to keep track of all appeals made by students and adopted their Records Retention Schedule to determine how long records should be retained and when they should be destroyed. Most importantly, the office began utilizing the Letters Module to draft all disciplinary contracts and do all the follow up with students directly in the system.
The Student Housing office also found benefit in reporting all housing violations through the same platform. Both offices collaborated to set up specific groups and permissions for student housing incidents and case management, so they can only report and view cases based on incident type. The school currently has 143 Resident Assistants able to report housing incidents through the site. OSSJA also began using the Reporting Feature to run quarterly reports on academic violations and understand which time periods have the most reported incidents. They also run a monthly report for the Athletics department and share it with their compliance staff to revise any incidents involving athletes and flag any potential NCAA violations.
Key Features Used:
- Appeals Feature
- Letters Feature
- Reporting Feature
Results
Since adopting the Letters Module, judicial affairs officers have saved a considerable amount of time by drafting and sending all issue letters and disciplinary agreements for formal hearings through their Advocate system. All communication with students and follow-up is done through the system so the staff is able to track the status of a case at any given time. Advocate has also allowed judicial officers to be more expedient in resolving cases as they now have a one-stop shop to request meetings and follow up with students. The Reporting function has allowed OSSJA to demonstrate how effectively they are responding to incidents and has provided them the opportunity to make more data-driven decisions based on student activity.
OSSJA also relied on Symplicity experts to provide them best practices for customizing and administrating their Advocate software.
“From a support perspective, I feel pretty supported by the folks that I work with, to help me understand my problems and help me improve the system.I pretty quickly can expect some creative ways to think about how to resolve problems that we're having."
