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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

1
Implement Smart Plan and Award with Colleague integration
2
Provide accurate degree progress and program maps
3
Create sustainable systematic processes to support the degree audit ecosystem

Risks & Assumptions

Quality of data Degree Audit (Programs)
Number of programs needing program maps
Integration with registration
Workflow redesign and training

Targeted Project Timeline

Award

April - May
Readiness
2026
June - July
Integration & Configuration
August - September
Testing & Validation
Oct - Nov
Pilot / Soft Launch
December
Go-Live

Smart Plan

April - May
Readiness
2026
June - July
Provisioning
August - Sept
Integration
Oct - Dec
Advising Guidleines / Initial Plan Config
Jan - May
Deployment
2027
June - Oct
Registration
December
Go-Live

 

Team and Governance

Project Team

Jacob Ju Information Technology Project Facilitator
Kevin WellsProject Lead, Ferrilli
Itza Gutierrez ReyesDirector of Strategic Initiatives
 

Executive Sponsors

Sandra Guzman, Vice President of Student Affairs
Eric Grabiel, Vice President of Instruction
Dr. Gayle Pitman, Vice President of Institutional Equity, Effectiveness, and Success
Dr. Chelsy Pham, Vice President of Information Technology
 

Communications & Change Management

Jacob Jun, Information Technology Project Facilitator
Kevin Wells, Project Lead, Ferrilli
Itza Gutierrez-Reyes, Director of Strategic Initiatives
Richard Morales, Director of Communications
Ben Grainger, Dean of Student Affairs