Abstract:

Iowa State University had over 31,000 students enrolled in 2012. In the Graduate College there are 112 programs managed by 60 departments on campus. Each year the graduate programs alone get over 6,000 applications and admit over 1,000 new students. Although the Graduate College has minimum requirements for prospective students applying for admission, each department has their own additional requirements. Originally the Graduate College had to contact each department annually to find out what changes to their admissions requirements were made, and then update each of the 112 program requirements webpages.
Beginning in 2009, the Graduate College created a web based application that allows each program to log in and update their admissions requirements without involving the Graduate College or their local IT people. The result was fantastic! The admissions requirements pages on the Graduate College website were all updated in hours or days instead of weeks, and they became the most visited pages on the entire website (even more than the homepage!). The departments loved the ability to update their information without IT intervention. The Graduate College IT department was able to use the time saved by working on new projects for the departments. Applications and enrollment increased. Everyone was happy!

Keywords:

Graduate College, admissions, enrollment, website, web application, empower.