Streamlined Student Success (3S) Update

As the semester comes to a close, the Streamlined Student Success (3S) project continues on.

In 2021, City Colleges launched an ambitious, three-pronged project to ensure an exceptional student experience, including streamlining processes and improving technology.

What You’ve Seen
You may have seen some of the public-facing goals we’ve reached, including:

• The “Apply to City Colleges” page at www.ccc.edu/apply
• Our district-wide branding survey and focus groups
• The new look of some of our student-facing emails

What You Might Not Have Seen

What you probably haven’t seen is all the behind-the-scenes work.

Strategic Rebrand Highlights:
This project had three distinct phases: research, strategy, and creative.

• After a very productive year, including surveys, focus groups, and steering committee meetings, City Colleges is preparing to launch a new look, new ad campaign, and new brand guidelines.
• Look for more information this summer, and keep an eye out for the ad campaign that will be chosen based on our market research (happening now!). If you see a survey in your CCC inbox, please take it and let the committee know what you think!

Website Redesign:

• Last summer our new “Apply” landing page launched, making it easier for prospective students to learn more about City Colleges, request information, take a virtual tour, and apply to City Colleges.
• We’ve bolstered the back-end tools so that the Enrollment teams at each college have a clear lead dashboard.
• A new web page template has been created and is in the process of being implemented. That means a lot to the digital marketing team, who won’t need as much time creating web pages from scratch when we need to tell Chicagoans about important initiatives and opportunities like Fresh Start, Future Ready, and more.
• Because there are so many web pages and so much important content on our website, the committee and our vendor-partners are taking a “sprint” approach, so they can identify high-need areas and make an impact while the overall content mapping is well underway.
• Soon, you’ll start to see the new branding and storytelling woven throughout the website.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
As you know, there are a lot of processes for students. Identifying and streamlining these processes is no small feat, and will ultimately involve all our departments.

• The CRM team is starting at the beginning – with the new student application and related processes.
• The Office of Information Technology and the Office of Enrollment Management are working closely with the colleges and impacted departments to determine what can stay, what needs to go, and what may need to be restructured.
• A design solution has been presented to the CRM steering committee and leadership throughout City Colleges.
• We have started to use a new tool to send our student emails. This will allow us to use open and click-through rates to determine the information students want and need – and adjust our communications accordingly.

As always, the 3S team wants you to be involved. If you have questions, please reach out to 3S@ccc.edu. But first, visit www.ccc.edu/3s, where we will continue to post a question of the month, take your suggestions, and keep you updated on the progress of this transformative district-wide project.

Thank you,

City Colleges of Chicago

3S Team