Our team is having a great semester on the west coast, with lots of momentum built up from successful deployments of Schools on Facebook at the Maricopa Community College District, New Jersey Institute of Technology, and Harvey Mudd College.

NJIT, New Jersey Institute of Technology,  is the state’s science and technology university. With just under 10,000 students, our deployment of Schools on Facebook on their campus is exciting for a number of reasons: primarily with them being our second technical institution next to Harvey Mudd College. Also for the fact that they are one of the only universities in the world to offer extensive courses in video game development :-)

As mentioned before, Harvey Mudd College is a technical institution known for it’s powerful math curriculum. A part of the Claremont Colleegs system, HMC is home to under 1,000 students, very reminiscent of my alma mater. Despite it’s size, we’re most excited about the adoption of Schools on Facebook on this campus because of their tight-knit community, as their academic culture is conducive to the types of behaviors encouraged in the application. For instance, HMC encourages students to sign their name on their peers’ assignments if they assisted them, and vice versa.

The Maricopa Community College District (MCCD) is one of the largest community college systems in the world, with over 150,000 students. Because MCCD is our first community college partner, they have been quite instrumental in the development in our features that support the unique needs of 2-year and government funded institutions. From small details like the ability to support success coaches inside of the application, to big details like recognizing prospective students differently from admitted students, this deployment has been a learning process for our team and theirs in terms of how flexible the Schools on Facebook application is.

One of our founding partners, Arizona State University played an important role in this partnership being so large in scope. With over 20,000 of ASU’s undergrads transferring 12+ credits from a MCCD college in 2009, the synergies Schools on Facebook is able to create between the two institutions are unprecedented.  This seemed like fate during a time when Inigral is in active conversations with the Gates Foundation to explore creative ways to make a positive impact on student retention in the postsecondary arena, as the Gates Foundation has funded MCCD for similar initiatives as well.