At the end of each quarter, the CampusESP team selects one of our customers as the recipient of our ESP MVP award. The award is meant to show our appreciation for a customer using their portal in innovative ways. Our Q1 ESP MVP award goes to Penn State University, in recognition of their outstanding crisis communication and portal expansion to 20 commonwealth campuses. We want to share their story. 

Personalized content through multi-campus functionality

It all started with the COVID-19 pandemic…

Two PSU campuses (University Park and Abington) were already using CampusESP to communicate with their parents and families. But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Penn State needed a way to send important updates to families across all 20 campuses.

Cyndy Hill, the Director of the Penn State Parents Program, reached out to us to see what we could do. The crisis meant that things were changing everyday, and families were expecting regular updates and responses to their questions. It was critical for us to brainstorm and execute quickly. 

According to Cyndy,

“Campuses were communicating with families on their own, but without dedicated staff, it was a challenge."

Through CampusESP’s multi-campus functionality, we built out a system for PSU to send out personalized, campus-specific information. Each PSU campus across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania now has its designated community of parents with a student enrolled at that particular campus. The campuses can moderate what type of information goes out to which users, manage questions and comments from parents, and communicate more quickly and efficiently than ever before.

Parent portal expansion implemented in 3 days

In just 3 days, we were able to expand the number of PSU campuses tenfold. There are now over 100,000 parents that receive content from Penn State’s parent and family portal. With over a million emails sent out in March, the Penn State Parents Program has mastered its crisis communication response. Penn State continues to create remarkable posts, announcements, and campaigns to provide important updates to parents.

Cyndy summarized the experience well:

"We were asked to expand the portal to 18 additional campuses on a Thursday. With Brooke and her team’s help, we created new communities and were able to send our first announcement to parents by Tuesday. This was truly a team effort among CampusESP, our IT office, and our staff. We are now able to share University-wide messages to parents and families on 20 undergraduate campuses.”

Congratulations to Penn State University!