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Our team is made up of former Slate database managers (Slate Captains) from schools using Slate for admissions, student success, and advancement.
What is your favorite way to engage with the Slate community?
Slate Summit. There’s nothing like the energy that comes from bringing Slate users together under one roof to learn, brainstorm, and celebrate.
What's your favorite type of project?
Anything that exists in the intersection between evergreen Slate functionality (something you don’t have to update every year) and making someone’s job easier (simplifying or accelerating a complicated process). That’s often some kind of a portal, but it can also be a suite of administrative alerts or dashboards, an internal-use dataset, or a custom integration.
When you're not Slating, what are you doing?
Trick question, since I am always Slating somewhere deep in my subconscious. But I also love walks to the playground with my wife and daughter and tinkering with projects around the house.
How did you first come to Slate?
Like many others, I started my career as an admissions counselor at Ohio Wesleyan University. From there my path winded all around the enrollment division until I landed in the Data Manager seat. We implemented Slate and the rest is history.
What's your favorite type of project?
I love the relationships formed during long-term support projects. Feeling like you are a part of the team and seeing huge improvements to the processes is an amazing feeling.
When you're not Slating, what are you doing?
When I am not Slating, you can find me at the Columbus Zoo, waterpark, or playground with my husband and two children. I also love to read, build puzzles, and eat delicious food.
How did you first come to Slate?
My Slate journey began in the Summer of 2013 over several rounds of French 75s at the Union League Cafe with Alexander Clark, who invited me to join his growing team at Technolutions. At that time, Technolutions supported 60 schools. We were responsible for building every application and trigger (rules before there were rules), and we helped schools with everything else from fields to portals.
What is your favorite way to engage with the Slate community?
I loved teaching Launchpad, Launchpad 200, and Basecamp (remember that?). So, I can’t wait for Post-Captain to launch our own in-person training session, coming very soon to a college campus near you!
When you're not Slating, what are you doing?
My head belongs to Slate, but my heart belongs to the great outdoors. I love camping with my dog Bailey and I dream of catching that perfect sunset wave off Playa Guiones.
How did you first come to Slate?
After a short career in student affairs within higher education, I transitioned into enrollment operations and became the Associate Director of Operations at Millersville University in Pennsylvania. When asked, "We purchased this system called Slate; do you want to manage it?" I said yes, and I've been working with Slate ever since. I've led full-scale implementations, built award-winning portals, presented at the Slate Summit four times, and done everything in between. Slate is more than a career to me; it's a passion.
What is your favorite type of project?
I absolutely love building eye-popping student status portals that standard Slate users can easily update and interact with. I also enjoy creating internal admin dashboards to visualize data for campus partners. Outside of portals and dashboards, there’s nothing I enjoy more than a good law school implementation or a financial aid visualization buildout.
When you're not Slating, what are you doing?
Playing basketball, working out, chauffeuring my 3 boys to sports and events or hanging out with my beautiful wife. If those things aren’t happening and I’m not Slating, then I’m watching LeBron James highlights while listening to Taylor Swift, because they are the two G.O.A.T.s of their respective worlds and I won’t accept any other opinion.
How did you first come to Slate?
Having managed enrollment operations on different (and less flexible) platforms, my former institution finally decided to make the leap to Slate and I was excited to lead the way. I thrived in a role where I was able to map out and develop what the system could do to help us achieve our goals (versus needing to conform to systems that weren’t nearly as user-friendly or admission-driven.)
What is your favorite way to engage with the Slate community?
Slate Summit! The opportunity to meet our clients and other users in person is definitely a highlight of the year for me. I love the energy, synergy, and inspiration that is a part of this particular conference experience; everyone leaves feeling empowered to make changes and updates on their campus (and where else can you literally return home with a suitcase full of possible solutions!)
When you're not Slating, what are you doing?
I get outdoors whenever possible and enjoy long walks and hikes (where, believe it or not, I often have my best Slate a-ha moments as I decompress work projects in my head!). I also enjoy any and all excuses to travel, be with family and friends, and catch live music.
How did you first come to Slate?
I never envisioned becoming a Slate Captain! Throughout my 10 years in higher education, I worked in different capacities in both Annual Giving and Alumni Relations roles. During my time as the Alumni Engagement Director at Mount St. Mary’s University, it became more and more apparent that we couldn’t do our jobs efficiently trying to piece together 7+ systems to meet the needs of the university and our constituents. Our admissions team had recently implemented Slate and our CIO encouraged us to look at Slate Advancement as our solution. I helped lead the implementation of the university’s Slate Advancement database (the 8th Slate Advancement database at the time) and quickly found a way to incorporate Slate into every daily operation.
What is one Slate thing that you are proud of?
I’m proud of my ability to translate items from different instance types – leveraging my Advancement background and interpreting how items used in Advancement can be helpful in Admissions and vice versa. Slate provides many of the same building blocks in both instance types and I enjoy finding ways to configure them to help my clients get the most out of Slate.
When you're not Slating, what are you doing?
While Slate may always be on my mind, when I’m not in Slate you can find me walking my dog (we’re serious walkers – 4 to 5 miles a day), listing to Taylor Swift, trying new recipes (I love to cook), and teaching in the history department at my alma mater.
How did you first come to Slate?
After creating a data assessment model that focused on evaluating donor retention and satisfaction through the Donor Engagement department at Clarkson University, I was asked to oversee our operations initiatives to execute a similar analysis model division wide. This included the implementation of Slate. Slate and I fell in love after I realized the system’s ability to drastically improve fundraising business processes which maximized our philanthropic return on investment.
What is your favorite way to engage with the Slate community?
Individual connections made through community conversations or the forums with other experienced Advancement users that have similar business processes and a passion for Slate. I have found this allows for deeper, collaborative and supportive relationships.
When you're not Slating, what are you doing?
Living in the outskirts of the Adirondack Park in NY, I enjoy fishing, boating and camping with my husband and son. I also love all things home fixer uppers and crocheting during the long winter months.
How did you first come to Slate?
In 2016, I joined the Undergraduate Admissions Office at the University of Vermont after managing the front end of an institutional student success portal overseen by the Office of the Registrar for over five years. The Admissions team was looking for a new CRM, and luckily, the best product won: we chose Slate. As the number of Slate instances on campus grew, so did my role. I eventually transitioned to central IT, where I supported cross-divisional work in three different databases.
What is your favorite type of project?
My favorite type of project is one that makes people's work easier and gets folks the data or functionality they need. The landscape of Higher Education is constantly changing and our systems need to be flexible enough to support the broad range of work we are asked to do. A successful project to me is one where the team feels like Slate is empowering them and not adding something burdensome or intimidating to their task list.
When you're not Slating, what are you doing?
Trying to make a perfect pie crust, hanging out with my awesome children, reading something fantastical from my to-be-read pile.
How did you first come to Slate?
I happened into Slate entirely by accident. I had started working with a small private school in an AV/IT role, overseeing the installations for a new campus, working closely with the grad admissions team who would go on to occupy most of that space. As the project was wrapping up, the existing Slate Captain put in her notice, and I inherited her system.
What is one Slate thing that you are proud of?
Funny enough, the things I’m most proud of are the least technical solutions. I’m proud of a review process I put in place for a grad nursing school. They were reviewing on paper and had inconsistent practices for getting that data entered. After meeting with the department leadership and assistants to understand their process and extolling the virtues of having a clear rubric, I was able to build a workflow and review process for them to do all of their decisioning within Slate along with the reporting to show their top applicants for final assessment.
When you're not Slating, what are you doing?
When I’m not in a database, you can likely find me on the golf course, in my garage 3d printing, recording my podcast (cough willsavethepodcast.com cough), at the beach, traveling, cleaning, or doing whatever the hyperfixation of the month is!
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