Success Stories

Starfish gives us the ability to support students across the University and changes how individual Penn Staters learn and work together. Learn more about Penn State’s Starfish success story—our growth, our culture, our impact on student success, and our community.

Map of Commonwealth Campuses

We Are Penn State

One University, Geographically Dispersed

  • We are a public, R-I university serving Pennsylvania and the global community.
  • We have 24 campuses and more than 440 degree programs across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, which operate as a single University.
  • We have an undergraduate enrollment of 73,476 and a graduate enrollment of 15,438, for a total of 88,914 students.

And Starfish serves all of us.

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Implementing Starfish

The launch of Starfish at Penn State was first announced by Executive Vice President and Provost Nicholas P. Jones in November 2015. The following semester, Starfish replaced homegrown systems as the University-wide system of record for advising notes and progress reports. Since the initial implementation period, the use of Starfish at Penn State has grown substantially beyond the original scope and goals. Today, Starfish at Penn State is widely used as a central resource for students seeking help and a key tool for student success and support efforts.

Milestones to Student Success

May 2016

Anchors Aweigh

  • 7 basic roles (Academic Leadership, Assigned Adviser, General Adviser, Academic Support Staff, Instructor, TA, Student)
  • 2 kiosks (Division of Undergraduate Studies, Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications)

2017

Getting Our Sea Legs

  • New specialist roles (e.g., ROTC, Education Abroad, World Campus student support roles, Undergraduate Admissions, Pre-Law Advising)
  • 84,316 recorded meetings at the end of Fall 2017

2018

Wind in Our Sails

  • Rapid growth of specialist roles (e.g., Student Aid, Registrar, Fellowships, Bursar, Health Professions Advising)
  • Serious conversations about student success increase

2019

Wind at Our Backs

  • 137,670 recorded meetings at the end of Fall 2019
  • Serious engagement with Starfish Analytics begins
  • Continued rapid growth of specialist roles and services (Learning Centers, Graduate roles, Athletics, Financial and Life Skills, Peer Mentoring, Peer Advising)
  • Kiosks in 60 locations, on every campus and in every college
  • Starfish Role Request System (SRRS) built by Software Engineering allows users to self-select roles
Old Main bell in the autumn

2020

Changing Tack

  • Agile transition to remote delivery for New Student Orientation, tutoring, and advising services in spring/summer 2020
  • Rapid and responsive development of new roles, services, kiosks, tracking items, progress surveys, and other functionality to support transition to remote delivery
  • Launch of role delegation in the SRRS gives units local control over role, kiosk, and service membership
  • Progress survey options refreshed to incorporate instructor and adviser ideas, give more balanced feedback to students, and respond to student needs during the pandemic
  • Hobsons Education Advances Award winner for 2020
We Are statue in the summer

2021

Back on Course

  • Surpassed 1 million meetings scheduled in Starfish
  • Transition to in-person/hybrid delivery for change in unit processes during return to campus in fall 2021
  • Development of “Raise Your Hand” for students to signal inability to return to campus in fall 2021 and get support
  • Launch of remote check-in kiosks for improved efficiency and staff experience
  • Delegation vastly expanded, allowing for Starfish to support the creation and management of  many more roles, services, and kiosks
  • Upgrade to role management interface and functionality, SRRS rebranded as Starfish Role Management (SRM)

Starfish at Penn State Today

Kiosks

Roles

Services

Meetings Recorded in Starfish by Semester

Chart of meetings recorded in Starfish for data recorded in table below

* Semesters impacted by remote course delivery during COVID-19

SemesterMeetings Recorded
Spring 20161,442
Fall 201663,064
Spring 201759,740
Fall 201784,316
Spring 201868,268
Fall 201890,579
Spring 201984,404
Fall 2019137,670
Spring 2020*94,927
Fall 2020*130,984
Spring 2021*118,356
Fall 2021139,548
[Starfish] allows all academic advisers to use the same platform to maintain advising notes and monitor student progress. It identifies at-risk students in real time and connects those students to services they need so they do not get behind, serves undergraduate and graduate students, allows for easy appointment scheduling. New data analytics that are being added will further improve this effectiveness. . . . This was a monumental shift in our capability to be able to help students.

Eric J. Barron, President Emeritus, Penn State

We need to reinvent and reinvigorate the culture around academic advising at Penn State. We must create an environment in which our students more readily see and understand the value of engaging with their academic advisers. Advising is not just about selecting classes or checking on degree requirements. It has to be about a sustained conversation that enables students to understand and articulate how the many pieces of their education come together as a whole. . . . [Starfish] will enable us to elevate our academic advising to a high level our students should come to expect.

Nicholas P. Jones, Executive Vice President and Provost, Penn State

It is increasingly clear that data and predictive analytics, along with other early-alert systems, are critical components of retention and student success. 

Nicholas P. Jones, Executive Vice President and Provost, Penn State

Effecting Cultural Change

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Through the engagement of colleagues from across the University, strengthened by our collaboration with Starfish, Penn State’s Commonwealth Campuses are making substantial strides toward enhancing our environments to better support student persistence at Penn State.

Penny Carlson, Assistant Vice President for Commonwealth Campuses, Penn State

What I find remarkable is that Penn State’s student body, as well as its leaders, are signaling their empathy for their fellow students and demonstrating that our priorities should be driven by the wellness of all.

Eric J. Barron, President Emeritus, Penn State

At Greater Allegheny, we put an emphasis on the student role of student-athlete. When our faculty raise flags in Starfish, I am able to immediately reach out to our players. I use the flag information to initiate conversations and ask “why.” The answers have shed light on both academic and personal difficulties students are experiencing in the classroom and/or at home. I am able to connect the students to our Learning Center for additional academic support and encourage them to use faculty office hours and form study groups with other players or classmates. In one situation, I learned a class absence was due to a lack of transportation. I was able to work with colleagues in other departments to help this student find a way to campus . . . When our teams travel, I especially remind those students who have received flags to use their provided iPads to read course materials, look at Canvas, and communicate with their professors.

Korie Morton-Rozier, Director of Athletics, Penn State Greater Allegheny

Especially in bigger classes of 150-plus students, it’s really nice to have [kudos]. As a first-semester freshman, it’s good to have that reassurance that I’m doing something right.

Alexandra Kohr, Student, Penn State

Our recorded tutorials were up 60% in fall 2019 compared to fall 2018. I think the Starfish subject tiles on the student landing pages helped students find us.

R. Neill Johnson, Director, Penn State Learning

Through the Starfish early alert flags, we noticed a pocket of students struggling in a BIO class. With collaboration between the Advising Office, Instructor, Learning Center and students, an organized study (review) session was held prior to the exam and all students who participated earned a C or better on that exam and all earned a passing grade at the end of the semester. Several of the students followed up with the Advising Office expressing how appreciative they were for the organized review session.

Amy Petrucci-Effinite, Advising Manager, Division of Undergraduate Studies, Penn State Shenango

As the DuBois Campus Registrar I’ve worked tightly with our Academic Advising group on campus for years to increase our student retention rates. Starfish has made keeping track of student interactions so integral as we work with our student body. We use faculty-set flags to look into students who we can intervene with to try and help before they dig themselves too deep a hole.

Garrett Roen, Campus Registrar, Penn State DuBois

. . . Penn State DuBois opened the One Stop which houses Admissions, Advising, Bursar, Career Services, Financial Aid, and Registrar all in one area. We got a Starfish Kiosk for all of the offices in the suite except Admissions, and it’s made life so much easier for us. The kiosk helps with the triaging of students during busy times . . . our students have gotten very used to the sign-in process and it’s made customer service that much better in our suite.

Garrett Roen, Campus Registrar, Penn State DuBois

Implementing the Starfish Success Plan with our Smart Track to Success students has allowed Academic Support to increase efficiencies during student on-boarding. The Success Plan has also provided students with a more organized structure for completing and submitting required pre-work.

Michelle C. Wiley, Assistant Director of Academic Development Services, Academic Affairs, Penn State World Campus

[With Starfish,] fall 2019 was the easiest semester ever to close out—what used to take weeks of data entry and correction once the semester had ended took one staff member only a matter of a few hours . . . I am looking forward to future enhancements. We have barely begun to use all the affordances Starfish promises.

R. Neill Johnson, Director, Penn State Learning

Our team looks forward to a deeper understanding of our students and the resources that they use. Starfish will help us track referrals between student affairs and academic units in a way that we have not had before, which is valuable when planning services.

Lynn Atanasoff, Career Counselor, Student Affairs, Penn State World Campus

My favorite feature [in the new Penn State Go app] is Starfish because it makes it easier for me to contact an adviser.

Sarah Jordan, Student, Penn State

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