Case Study: Schoolcraft College achieves anytime, anywhere virtual desktop access and improved student engagement with Ellucian Ethos

Virtual desktops give students remote access to courses

Schoolcraft College, a two-year institution in Livonia, Michigan with about 36,000 enrolled students, needed to modernize classrooms and support distance learning—specifically providing remote access to high-performance and graphically intensive software used in programs like culinary arts and nursing. To integrate its ERP data with virtual desktops and enable entitlement-based access, the college worked with Ellucian, implementing Ellucian Ethos alongside a virtual desktop environment.

Using Ellucian Ethos to pull class-enrollment data into a centralized data model (with VMware delivering the digital workspace), Ellucian enabled students to access the same specialized desktops from any device and location. The solution gave students remote access to required software, freed professors from troubleshooting installations, let IT move computer labs across campus within an hour, and produced measurable efficiency gains and cost savings for IT—while expanding equitable access to coursework for all students.

Schoolcraft College

Patrick Turner

Vice President and Chief Information Officer