Case Study: Cornell University achieves a more engaging, streamlined new-student experience with Salesforce for Nonprofits (Community Cloud)

Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Uses Salesforce to Enhance the New Student Experience

Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences faced a fragmented, information‑heavy new‑student onboarding process in which incoming students received multiple disconnected emails and had no easy, scalable way to get personalized help about enrollment, advising, and campus life. The college needed a solution that felt natural to students, increased engagement, and reduced administrative friction during a high‑stress period.

CALS launched Salesforce Community Cloud to create a virtual community with groups for new and transfer students, a social feed for crowd‑sourced Q&A, and searchable libraries of resources. The platform drove strong engagement—more than 2,700 posts and comments in 10 weeks—cut call volume by 48%, simplified access to university information, and freed staff to focus on higher‑value support, with plans to add an Employer Community for career engagement.

Cornell University

Rebecca Joffrey

Director of Interactive Services