Case Study: College of Southern Maryland boosts graduation rate from 13% to 28% with Ellucian

Finding near completers and getting them to the next stage

The College of Southern Maryland faced chronically low graduation rates—just 13% for first-time, full-time degree and certificate seekers—as many students didn’t realize how close they were to completing credentials. To address this, CSM partnered with Ellucian and leveraged their Ellucian Colleague® ERP to find a faster, automated way to identify “near-completers” without overburdening a small staff.

Ellucian worked with CSM to build a dashboard and batch-analysis process that draws from Colleague to identify students close to finishing, trigger automated outreach and emails, and support a $600 scholarship to re-enroll past students; the process runs three times a year. As a result, CSM’s graduation rate for the 2015 cohort rose from 13% to 28% over four years, about 3,700 additional graduates were produced, and the college now adds roughly 30–60 associate degrees at fall/spring cycles and 20–30 in the summer—benefits enabled by Ellucian’s solution.

College of Southern Maryland

Carol Harrison

Registrar