CUSTOMER STORY
From Link Farm to Front Door
Utah State University Rebuilds MyUSU on Pathify
Quick Summary:
The Challenge & Solution: Utah State replaced a static, link-based student portal with MyUSU 2.0, built on Pathify and launched in August 2021 after a six-month process.
Platform Capabilities: MyUSU tailors resources by persona, class status, time of year and semester, adds two-way communication between students and staff, and carries full parity between web and mobile. Later additions include global search and the Success module.
Strategic Results: In the first year users logged in nearly one million times, totalling 3.5 million sessions and 7.5 million actions. Sixty percent of MyUSU users are active, with an average of over 8,000 taking action every weekday.
Launching MyUSU 2.0 in August 2021 culminated a six-month process where Utah State University set out to turn its student portal into a true engagement platform. The original was a static, link-based web page lacking personalization and communication capabilities, according to Rene Eborn, Deputy of Digital Transformation and Associate Vice President of Strategic Initiatives.
The institution wanted a cohesive online experience — one helping students feel connected and reach the resources they need to succeed. To get there, USU staff and student body government identified the specific challenges the new platform had to solve.
The previous portal mostly looked like a link farm without much thought for the student experience. It added confusion rather than removing it, because it never guided students on which actions to take and forced them to remember a different password for every system.
“It was basically a website with a bunch of links, organized to look pretty,” Eborn said.
Identifying the Need for Change
Like many other institutions, USU reevaluated its needs during 2020. The previous student portal was disorganized, cluttered and generic from a communications standpoint. Given the shift from in-person learning to online, Eborn believed it was time for a change.
“The legacy portal needed modernization, and there was a need for a collaboration platform to encourage engagement,” Eborn said. “This was especially important during the pandemic because we had to rapidly migrate face-to-face learning into remote learning.”
USU also lacked community building within a digital space, and infrastructure connecting students with their peers. The existing portal ran one-way communication, so it could not answer concerns or send targeted messages. Utah State wanted resources tailored by persona, class status, time of year and semester — none of which the incumbent provided.
Providing a New Modern Tool
Throughout Utah State’s RFP process, Pathify was the only platform to meet every criterion students and staff laid out for the implementation team. It gave users a customizable, intuitive dashboard where they receive information on their terms, plus a way to connect with each other, their clubs, departments and the resources they need.
USU also found two-way communication. Administrators gained the ability to send targeted messages, and students gained a way to send questions privately to student body officers and faculty in one centralized place.
“There were a couple reasons Pathify stood out to us,” Eborn said. “The first was that Pathify met all of our requirements, including the ability to offer a secure ecosystem for our students to connect. Additionally, during the sales experience, all the way to implementation, Pathify met our extremely aggressive schedule.”
Deputy of Digital Transformation and Associate Vice President of Strategic Initiatives
User adoption is usually the hardest thing in changing a culture, but for us, it’s been very successful. The best thing is students are using it, and that makes me happy.
Rene Eborn, Deputy of Digital Transformation and Associate Vice President of Strategic Initiatives
MyUSU at Launch
Understanding the campus-wide impact, USU hired Calissa Chandler, who now leads optimization for MyUSU. Chandler points to the range of use cases it covers for students and faculty alike.
Utah State published a report titled “Connect with Aggies Everywhere” detailing key data from MyUSU and recommendations for embedding it further within the institution. In the first year of bringing on Pathify, users logged in nearly one million times, totalling 3.5 million sessions and 7.5 million actions. Sixty percent of MyUSU users are active, with an average of over 8,000 users taking action every weekday.
Students engage for academic and co-curricular reasons alike, spending an average of three minutes per session. “When using the portal, students are purposeful and task-oriented in searching and utilizing tools for class, registration, finances and degree progress,” the report states.
I really like that it acts like a one-stop shop. I love how there’s multiple ways to direct people and get them where they need to go. I think that’s a big part of what makes it really useful.
Calissa Chandler, MyUSU Coordinator
Opportunities for Growth
Utah State’s focus group pointed to a desire for more communication of important topics and strong calls-to-action linked to actionable resources. The same students also mentioned an interest in seeing more group options matching their interests.
The institution took early feedback and made continual improvements building out resources, groups, widgets and additional pages. During the 2022-23 academic year, USU rolled out the Success module — aimed at giving students automated tasks and reminders for specific action items. It also rolled out global search to help students more easily navigate the Engagement Hub.
Each of these updates come with the goal of improving the campus experience for different segments in the USU community.
“We’re trying to make MyUSU a place to support all users in any area they need,” Chandler said. “That’s a part of their experience here at USU. We really want it to help bring a sense of belonging in all areas of campus life.”
MyUSU Today
Parity between the mobile app and the web plays a significant role in driving engagement, making it easy for students to pick up MyUSU wherever they are. Eborn notes that holding everything in one place makes it easier for students to finish what they start.
First-year students complete equity and diversity training before arriving on campus, and getting them through it had been a challenge. “We set up Pathify so students received notifications and knew how to register for the training,” Eborn said. “The success of that was amazing. Before Pathify, we had 500 or 600 students who didn’t register and when we put it on the portal, the number greatly decreased.”
Despite being an early advocate, Eborn said the data surprised her, given the time it typically takes to adopt technology in higher ed. “User adoption is usually the hardest thing in changing a culture, but for us, it’s been very successful,” Eborn said. “The best thing is students are using it, and that makes me happy.”
About Utah State University
Founded in 1888, Utah State University is Utah’s land grant institution, offering 168 undergraduate degrees and 143 graduate degrees, and serving over 28,000 students in Logan, at regional campuses and learning centers around the state, and at USU Eastern. Known for its robust and cutting-edge research, Utah State challenges students to pursue academic opportunities that change the world.
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