Elon University honored with the EllumiNation Campus Award for new visual transcript

By Emmy Cone-Parnes ’18

A partnership between Application Technologies, the Office of the Registrar and Student Life has been honored by technology company Ellucian with its EllumiNation Campus Award for inspiring work creating Elon University’s visual transcript.

Registrar Rodney Parks nominated the team because of its innovative approach to create a transcript that offers a visual representation of the broad range of experiences of an Elon student. The team used Ellucian’s software to implement a better way for students to document their academic learning in experiential contexts.

The team created a co-curricular record for all undergraduate students that allows students to better detail their academic experiences and transcript to employers and on social media platforms. More than 600 students have used the new transcript since May 2016 and the responses from students and employers have been incredibly positive.

“Rodney wanted Elon to be recognized for all the amazing things we have done to make transcripts more than just a piece of paper, but rather transcripts to paint students’ experiences,” said Laura Kappert, director of applications technologies at Elon. 

The innovation began when Elon University was selected by the Lumina Foundation as one of 12 schools to work on an initiative to extend traditional academic transcripts. The goal of this initiative was to redesign transcripts to describe the full set of a student’s educational experiences.

This initiative utilized Ellucian Colleague, a student information system that provides institutions with necessary information and resources to manage university records. With the use of this software, Elon redesigned a new student record which tracks five co-curricular areas that define Elon’s experiences: service and civic engagement, leadership, undergraduate research, internships and global engagement.

Presented at the annual Ellucian Live conference, three EllumiNation awards are given to honor institutions and individuals for their work and dedication to improve technologies on campuses to support student success and improve operational efficiencies. Representatives from Application Technologies and the Office of the Registrar were present at the conference to receive the award.

When asked about the team’s reaction to receiving the award, Kappert answered, “We were surprised, excited and extremely honored. It has been a joint effort to get the technology in place to make the new co-curricular transcripts possible.”