Case Study: Pennsylvania Highlands Community College achieves uninterrupted student services during COVID lockdowns with RingCentral

How This Top Pennsylvania Community College Continued Serving Students During the Lockdowns without Missing a Step

Pennsylvania Highlands Community College is a two-year institution serving western Pennsylvania across six campuses and online, offering affordable degrees and career certificates. When COVID-19 lockdowns hit and demand for retraining surged, the college’s legacy on-prem phone system—desk-bound landlines, costly administration, and limited remote capabilities—left faculty and staff unable to effectively transition to working from home.

Penn Highlands deployed RingCentral’s cloud phone solution—set up in under 10 minutes via a trial—and equipped faculty and staff with laptop and mobile apps that preserve office numbers for calls and texts without exposing personal numbers. The change kept instructors, administrators, donors and media reachable during campus closures, enabled continued fundraising and student support, and allowed the college to maintain operations and serve students throughout the lockdowns.

Pennsylvania Highlands Community College

Matt Hoffman

Chief Information Officer