Looking for best practices for storing student information in RE

Anonymous Blackbaud User · February 2015

Greetings All! I'm looking to hear how others have approached this problem. We ported our old mainframe system over to RE. The old system was custom built, so during the implementation process, the decision was made (long before I arrived on the scene) to add student club information onto the educational attribute tab. Our RE is used for tracking donors, alumni and potential donors. Fast forward several years, and we now have a bewildering array of attributes on the educational attribute tab. Some attributes relate to an alumni's participation on athletic teams, to being on the student council (and everything in-between). Some of our Faculty have been creating an educational relationship for current students in order to track what student clubs they belong to. The problem is that our practice has been to only create an educational relationship for alumni, since that is how we know for certain that they have graduated. When they convocate, we upload (or update) their information into RE. We are using ImportOmatic to upload their information from PeopleSoft into RE. Before a student graduates, the system of record for any contact information is the Registrar, not RE. If a student is a donor, then they could also exist in RE. When a Faculty creates a blank educational relationship record, once the student graduates, two records end up on their record, which is not ideal. So, I'm looking to see how others track student attributes on their constituent records. Thanks for taking the time to read my long winded post! cheers, Norman Neil Manager, Data Governance, Quality and Management University of Calgary

Elizabeth Johnson · March 2015

Dear Norman,

We also use the education attributes to track honors, leadership positions, athletics, performance arts that requires auditions, day vs board, referral programs, etc. They are grouped together so all the leadership positions are in one table and athletics in another. We have the alumni module so we have the ability to mark an education relationship record as "primary alumni information" as an additional safeguard we only populate the "class of" field for their relationship with our school. We use the date entered, date graduated, and date left for our school and for other schools. We found that when using the canned profiles it would generate any ones class that landed on the profile regardless if they went to our school and it was very confusing for the fundraisers as they prepped for meetings. We no longer use the canned profiles but we continue with the practice. The status is also helpful along with school type.

A major difference in our systems is that students are added to RE when they are enrolled and not after they graduate. We are integrated with Education Edge so I'm not facing the same problems you are. Perhaps changing when you bring your students into your system might solve some, but certainly not all of your problems. It is great that you have students that donate - a sign of a healthy relationship!

A few questions that might help with any additional responses - how large are your graduating classes? Approximately how many records end up with issues? When you say "When a Faculty creates a blank educational relationship record, once the student graduates, two records end up on their record, which is not ideal." I interpreted this that two education relationship records end up on their record, correct?

One last thought - I think it really does make sense to keep this information with the education record as it is a reflection of what they were interested in while they were at your school. These things change as time progresses and particularly if fields like attributes are not dated (gasp) it gets rather muddy trying to discern what motivates a constituent in the present.

Hope this was helpful, Elizabeth

Erin Fleischmann · March 2015

We create an RE record for each student upon deposit and mark them via a constituent code of Student. We used to only add an education record when a student became an alum; however, we were stuck transferring data from attributes to their education record or having data in multiple areas. We made a conscience decision to create education records upon entry to the school and keep all pertinent information there. We keep track of scholarships they have received, their houses, athletics, student activities, reason for leaving, number of units earned, expected graduation. This is based on requests we receive to target certain groups (or exclude certain groups - student did not have a positive experience based on reason for leaving - may not want to solicit them or their parents). We use school type to differentiate between our graduate schools and our undergraduate programs. We use Status to track their "status" based on our perception of them (credential, certificate, current, withdrawn, graduate, undergraduate, etc.) Anyone who leaves before completing 12 units does not get an education record and basic data is stored under Attributes as a former student.

Elizabeth Johnson · March 2015

I think one place we differ from Erin is that even if a student doesn't complete a semester (in their case 12 credits) they receive an education relationship record. We have a separate education attribute that tracks if they did not complete a semester.

Looking for best practices for storing student information in RE

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