Case Study: Mildred Elley achieves modernized campus operations and cost savings with Campus Cafe

How a Cloud-Based Student Information System Modernized Mildred Elley’s Campus Operations

Mildred Elley, a career and trade school with about 2,000 students across multiple campuses and expanding online offerings, faced an outdated legacy SIS (SONIS/Jenzabar) that was difficult to navigate, required manual data entry and custom integrations, and depended on costly onsite servers. Seeking a cloud-based, easy-to-use system to support financial aid, registration, coursework and alumni tracking, the college selected Campus Cafe (Campus Cafe Software) to replace SONIS and modernize operations.

Campus Cafe implemented its cloud-based student information system with a nine-month rollout that included data migration, onsite training, and a U.S.-based help desk; the platform integrates with Moodle and centralizes student records. As a result of Campus Cafe’s solution, Mildred Elley gained a single source of truth with real-time reports (removing the need for a software engineer to build reports), bulk degree-audit printing, online student portals for payments and registration, direct email/text communication, and lower long‑term costs—reported as hundreds of thousands less than competing systems—after going live in Spring 2022.

Mildred Elley

Carrie Swain

Assistant Director of Curriculum and Accreditation