No Comparison to CourseLeaf for University of Montana

“There’s definitely a feeling of relief now that we are back with CourseLeaf. We have confidence in CourseLeaf because they deliver exactly what they say they will.”

- Maria Mangold, Registrar for University of Montana

Campus leaders break with former provider due to unmet promises, lackluster results

The University of Montana (UM) was an early CourseLeaf client, using their academic catalog software, CourseLeaf CAT, beginning in 2016. But, in 2019, when budget cuts made a deep discount from another higher education software provider impossible to pass up, UM left the CourseLeaf family. Three years later, after months of missed deadlines and technical headaches, UM returned to the fold.

Today, the campus of 10K students continues to work with CourseLeaf, a software partner that UM administrators say keeps them moving forward on important projects to improve communication with students, make curriculum changes easy for professors and staff, and ensure efficient course scheduling.

“There’s definitely a feeling of relief now that we are back with CourseLeaf,” says Maria Mangold, UM Registrar. “We have confidence in CourseLeaf because they deliver exactly what they say they will.”  

The CourseLeaf team couldn’t be happier to be partnering with UM. They never doubted the Missoula campus would be back. In fact, at CourseLeaf headquarters in Coralville, Iowa, employees never fully retired the UM mug from the wall of honor – a display of more than five hundred mugs from campus partners across the nation and around the world.

“They were confident we weren’t gone forever,” says Troy Morgan, UM Associate Registrar. “They still had our mug with the UM seal on it.”

Budget tensions, hollow promises

UM first contracted with CourseLeaf in 2016. The project to integrate CAT software into the existing student information system (Ellucian Banner) was a success, and campus leaders started talking with CourseLeaf about curriculum management and course scheduling projects. However, dark clouds were looming on the horizon. At the time, the State of Montana was grappling with a $227 million budget deficit, and the state’s higher education campuses were on the chopping block.

Amidst this grim backdrop, UM administrators decided in 2017 to contract with a software provider that promised to waive implementation fees if the campus would install the firm’s entire software package. The idea was that UM would become a marketing case study for the firm, a success story that could be shared and used to spotlight the ROI of the firm’s catalog, scheduling, and curriculum software.

The case study never saw the light of day. From Day 1 of the software implementation project, UM administrators say they were acutely aware of the firm’s startup status. Employees were constantly coming and going, and, at times, there was a glaring lack of familiarity with the UM’s existing student information system. UM administrators tried their best to educate the firm’s front-line employees, but this resulted in additional tension.

“When we were working with them on the catalog integration, they thought that program requirements were kept in Banner when, in fact, they live in the catalog,” recalls Morgan. “They didn’t have experience with Banner, or at least not as much as they said they had, and there was no way we could take the time to train them.”

As the project continued to sputter, Mangold, who inherited the contract when she became Registrar in summer 2020, grew increasingly uneasy. “It was obvious they had bitten off more than they could chew,” she says.

The last straw

Problems with the service provider put extra pressure on UM staff members who were already overloaded. They were counting on the service provider to take the lead and, as a result, some of the load off their backs, but this wasn’t happening. Mangold, leery of more project bottlenecks and growing staff fatigue, decided it was time to impose a final deadline.

“I told them they had one more chance to make everything work, and if it didn’t, well, we would have to move in a new direction,” she recalls. “So much time had already been invested into the project, and there was a real feeling of frustration that the software systems still weren’t completely integrated. We were still encountering problems. Our staff members’ time and energy were not being well-utilized.”

A new chapter

The service provider failed to meet Mangold’s deadline, which, at this point, was not a surprise. Mangold was quick to issue a new RFP for a catalog, curriculum, and course scheduling software provider, and this time around, she made sure there would be no talk of quid pro quo discounts. She only wanted hard proof from service providers that they could complete the project.

“I did not want to be courted; I had zero interest in sales pitches,” she says. “My staff and I asked very pointed questions of the reference schools put forward by each service provider, and we took responses very seriously. CourseLeaf’s references really sold us on them because, from what everyone was saying, it was clear they had what we needed; they had the entire package.”

Once the ink was dry on the new contract, UM and CourseLeaf moved forward with several software optimization projects. The campus implemented CourseLeaf’s curriculum management software, CourseLeaf CIM, in 2022 and wrapped up an academic catalog upgrade with CAT in 2023. They are currently working together to add CourseLeaf’s academic scheduling software, CourseLeaf CLSS, to the campus’s software bundle.

“The service we get from CourseLeaf is head and shoulders above what we were getting from our old service provider,” says Mangold. “Part of our job is to market new software to the administration and faculty so that they will use it and benefit from it. We never felt confident introducing the software from our past provider. There were always technical issues.”

Instant ROI

Now that UM administrators have ticked off significant software projects on their to-do list, they feel more confident about tackling future projects.

With CourseLeaf CIM in place, UM faculty members effortlessly enter new course details into the curriculum system and update details for old ones. A big reason for this newfound ease is that staff in the Registrar’s Office worked with CourseLeaf implementation specialists to create digital forms that guide users as they enter course information. "There’s little room for mistakes," says Morgan. “It sounds too simple to be true, but the forms make a huge difference,” he says. “We’re looking to acquire the CIM Bridge soon, which I expect will reduce workload for our staff even further.”

Morgan is also excited about the CLSS implementation, which he says will allow each academic department scheduler to upload course schedules and transfer the new information directly to the campus’s Banner system. He predicts CLSS could cut the hours spent manually uploading new schedules to Banner in half.

Morgan is paying close attention to the software implementation projects with CourseLeaf for more reasons than job security. He’s pursuing a master’s degree in public administration, and for one of his courses, the professor asked students to design a program evaluation. Morgan created a survey to gauge the success of the CIM software implementation. He plans to send his survey to staff members who use CIM soon.

“I’m happy to share the results with CourseLeaf once they are available,” he says.