www.dcc.edu/

With over fifty percent of our students applying for admission online, this is an ideal time for us to move forward with putting these documents online as we go greener.”
—Gwen Boutte, Director, Admissions & Enrollment Services

Prior to 2010, Delgado Community College discarded large quantities of leftover printed catalogs at the end of each academic cycle. These catalogs cost nearly $30,000 to produce annually and required hundreds of hours of administrative time for editing and production.

In addition to the costs and inefficiencies of this print-based process, institutional recruitment efforts struggled in the face of increasing demand for student-focused, easy-to-use electronic catalogs and effective online access to information.

To address these concerns and others, the college began searching for an academic catalog management solution that would ultimately allow this school to significantly reduce its reliance on printed catalogs and, in turn, improve institutional recruitment and sustainability goals.

Prior to starting their search, the team at Delgado, led by Public Relations and Marketing, identified the following requirements and benefits of moving the College Catalog to an online Academic Catalog Management System (ACMS):

  • Streamlined, accountable editing process with version tracking and e-mail notification system to remove the need to circulate printed materials
  • Ability to accommodate late and mid-year changes, such as for program additions
  • Increased ease of online access
  • Consistency in presentation of information
  • One change is reflected for both College Catalog and Program Web page information

The next step was to send out a request for information and begin the product review, demonstration, and evaluation process of four catalog CMS vendors. Led by Public Relations and Marketing, this initiative involved participants from across campus: the College Catalog Committee; Information Technology; Policy; Admissions; Learning and Student Development; Student Affairs; Purchasing; and Budget and Finance.

Ultimately, the group determined that Digital Architecture's Acalog system was the clear winner. A few of the key features that led to Delgado choosing Acalog were:

  • Supports an unlimited number of concurrent users
  • Met all editing and production specifications
  • Product support: training and catalog conversion process
  • Fully compliant with information systems requirements
  • Hosting, support, and upgrades are all-inclusive
  • Student portfolios

The Acalog portfolio feature, which Delgado identified as a key value, allows students to collect and save information specific to the areas that interest them as they browse the online catalog. This personalized catalog then becomes a digital resource that can be shared with friends, family and advisors, reducing the need for printing and/or shipping academic catalogs, and further helping Delgado to meet its sustainability goals.

Staff members from Delgado's Public Relations and Marketing department which oversees production of the College Catalog, estimate that by year three of using Acalog, catalog production costs will fall as much as 30% - a savings of over $18,000 annually. And, the hundreds of hours of administrative time used to produce printed catalogs will be able to be dedicated to other pressing and emerging needs.

View the Delgado Community College Catalog here: http://catalog.dcc.acalog.com/