Campus Labs: Reshaping the Future of Higher Education

The inception of Campus Labs traces back to 2001 when two friends—Eric Reich and Michael Weisman—stumbled upon a novel idea of creating a business focused on collecting student feedback as a medium to improve campus services. Reich and Weisman, who were classmates at the University of Buffalo, eventually parlayed their concept into a winning submission in the Henry A. Panasci Jr. Technology Entrepreneurship Competition. With a significant prize amount of $25,000 at their disposal, the dynamic duo subsequently launched a technology startup named StudentVoice. Fast forward a few years, StudentVoice transformed into Campus Labs, and by 2008, the company expanded to serve 350 Member Campuses throughout the US. The stellar growth of Campus Labs over the years consequently earned it a reputation of being Western New York’s most successful startup since the turn of the 21st century. Inspired by thorough research and careful homework—visiting different campuses and learning about the different institutional challenges that administrators face—the entrepreneurs persistently continued innovating and expanding their services. Today, almost two decades after its founding, Campus Labs is marking its prominence in the realm of education technology with over 150 employees, more than 1400 Member Campuses in its roster, and a comprehensive set of solutions, while still being headquartered in Buffalo.

No longer confined to the capabilities of a single survey product, the Campus Labs platform brings to the table integrated software and cloud-based assessment tools to facilitate higher education. The company is guided by the mission focused on transforming and empowering colleges and universities with strategic data insights.

Transforming Institutions with Data

At the heart of Campus Labs is the vision to help students to succeed. As such, to accomplish its mission Campus Labs brings forth an integrated platform that can break down all the data silos in institutions and lay a strong foundation to support valuable insights, unified information, and better decisions. Providing a centralized hub for a holistic view of campuses, the Campus Labs platform collects and connects all the campus data to delve into the right questions. The platform equips institutions with the power to glean valuable insights about their effectiveness in terms of meaningful reporting for accreditation, more precise ways to predict retention, and ingenious tools for better student engagement.

Harnessing powerful analytics, the Campus Labs platform plays an integral role in evolving institutional practices, enhancing the student experience, and making more informed decisions. With dynamic data visualizations through reporting and dashboards, predictive analytics, learning analytics, and data science, the platform fulfills its purpose of promoting student learning and success, drilling into the campus data and better supporting academic progress. Progressing beyond just data collection and documentation, the platform helps institutions to foster a campus-wide culture of assessment and drive evidence-based decisions. To encourage improvement and accountability, institutions can utilize the platform to align strategic priorities, annual reports, and assessment plans, track outcomes and provide in-depth reports on campus-wide progress, and access institutional-wide data while meeting demands of compliance requirements. They can also seamlessly evaluate the effectiveness of academic programs and support services while managing workflows, leveraging annual assessment and planning efforts, and discerning areas for continued progress.

In an effort to expedite better teaching and deeper learning, the platform enables institutional faculty to make a difference in the academic journey of their students by ensuring that their teaching methods are impactful. Deploying Campus Labs for Teaching and Learning, the faculty can connect student learning data and quality of instruction, unlocking meaningful insights about outcomes across all divisions and departments. With its course evaluation tools and a library of rubrics, the Campus Labs platform assists the faculty in emphasizing formative assessment, comparing results over multiple terms, incorporating evidence into strategic plans while keeping track of the departmental progress.

The Campus Labs platform aids institutions in identifying the most effective programs, matching an individual student with the best resources, and gaining a deeper understanding and holistic view of student success. With predictive analytics, visualization and insights, advisor support, and automated/manual early alerts in place, the faculty can customize predictive models to meet the unique needs of students, gauge the effectiveness of support services, and streamline appointment scheduling and communication while keeping a tab on students who need support the most.