Ellucian Smart Plan and Award
Transforming Academic Planning & Degree Completion
Ellucian Smart Plan & Award is modernizing how we support student success through guided planning, degree tracking, and real-time academic visibility.
Why are we implementing it?
The implementation of Ellucian Smart Plan & Award is designed to strengthen student persistence and completion by providing clear, structured academic pathways and real-time progress tracking. The platform directly supports our strategic initiatives by aligning degree requirements with intentional program maps that help students stay on track from entry to completion. By increasing transparency in degree requirements, students and advisors gain a shared, accurate view of academic progress, reducing confusion and last-minute surprises. Additionally, this modernized planning tool equips both students and advisors with intuitive, data-informed technology that enhances advising conversations, promotes proactive interventions, and supports informed decision-making throughout the student journey.
Key Benefits / Outcomes
For students, Smart Plan & Award will create a clearer, more structured, and more transparent academic experience.
Students will have a real-time, interactive academic plan that shows which requirements they’ve completed and which remain. They will be able to see how each course applies to their degree, identify milestones, and better understand how close they are to graduation or transfer.
With shared visibility into academic progress, counselors can help students make informed decisions earlier—reducing excess units, avoiding missed requirements, and minimizing surprises at graduation. Students will benefit from clearer pathways, fewer scheduling missteps, and stronger alignment between their goals and their academic plans.
Counselors will have real-time visibility into each student’s academic progress through an integrated planning and degree audit system. This means clearer identification of unmet milestones and development of structured academic plans.
With shared dashboards and transparent requirement mapping, counselors can focus less on interpreting catalog rules and more on coaching, goal alignment, transfer strategy, and early intervention. The platform will also support:
- Early identification of students who are off the pathway
- Clear catalog-year and program requirement tracking
- Standardize degree audit logic across programs
- Reduced last-minute graduation surprises
Counselors will gain a more streamlined workflow and stronger planning tools to guide students toward timely completion and transfer success.
About the Project
Goals & Objectives
Risks & Assumptions
Project Hub