Case Study: Goucher College achieves secure, high-density campus Wi-Fi and simplified cloud management with Cisco Meraki

Goucher College - Customer Case Study

Goucher College, a liberal arts school of more than 2,000 students in Baltimore, needed higher bandwidth and secure network access to support video teaching, VoIP and AV across its 287‑acre campus. With legacy hardware at end‑of‑life and only 1‑Gb uplinks — and a two‑person IT team — Goucher chose Cisco Meraki’s cloud‑managed Security & SD‑WAN, Switching and Wireless LAN (MR access points and MS switches) to modernize the campus network.

Cisco Meraki delivered a zero‑touch, preconfigured deployment of more than 730 APs and roughly 70 switches (with ~40 APs and ~30 switches added later) to provide 10‑Gb uplinks, centralized dashboard visibility, 802.1X authentication, Layer‑3 firewall controls, floorplan AP placement, automated firmware scheduling and built‑in troubleshooting. The Meraki solution reduced manual configuration errors and deployment time, enabled high‑density Wi‑Fi for video learning and VoIP, and simplified operations for the lean IT staff — firmware upgrades can be scheduled with a single click — while supporting ongoing campus growth.

Goucher College

Greg Howard

Director of Networking and Telecom