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At George Mason, Departments Give Centralized Calendaring an A+

25Live Scheduling and Calendaring Brings Order to aVery Decentralized Campus

George Mason University

Fairfax, Virginia

Products

25Live® Scheduling, Calendaring, and Event Management System

Why 25Live?

“We reviewed multiple scheduling systems, and CollegeNET’s 25Live offered the best solution for integration of academic and event scheduling into a centralized calendar publishing system.” – Marylou Holly, Associate Registrar for Scheduling and Communication

The Savings

Hundreds of hours no longer required for integrating incompatible calendars, correcting double bookings and making scheduling changes

George Mason Logo

The Challenge

Spread across diverse campuses and instructional sites, George Mason had long struggled to coordinate a hodgepodge of independently managed scheduling systems. Events and academic scheduling operated on separate software with no integration, so double bookings, class relocations and other problems were commonplace. Event scheduling was highly decentralized, with individual departments administering their own processes that varied from paper and pencil to Excel spreadsheets to Google calendars. Manually integrating all scheduling was extremely time consuming and often inaccurate. According to Marylou Holly, not knowing where activities were occurring at any given time was a significant concern, particularly during emergency communication situations such as weather closures. To solve these problems, University administration wanted to establish one centralized scheduling system that integrated all calendars and was flexible enough to accommodate the unique scheduling needs of each department. They also wanted a system that offered calendar publishing.

The Solution

George Mason had been using CollegeNET’s Schedule25® software for bulk academic scheduling for several years when it learned that upgrading to the 25Live academic and event scheduling system would provide them the centralized scheduling and calendaring they were looking for. Of all the scheduling systems the school considered, only 25Live enabled each department to customize its own calendars, while fully integrating academic and event scheduling into one central calendar. And it offered robust calendar publishing functionality. George Mason licensed 25Live and began integrating every department calendar from each campus – a process that took some time and effort, but, according to Marylou, went smoothly – largely because everyone was so enthusiastic about finally having one centralized source of information.

The Results

George Mason has now organized all classrooms, department-owned space and event venues for all of its campuses into one system. Departments have been quick to embrace the many customizing options, creating their own calendars with the appearance and functionality to suit their needs. Academic departments have discovered how easy it is to publish their calendars to multiple sites and feed them directly to their Outlook calendars. The campus recreation centers use their calendars to post facilities hours and workout times. And event schedulers can identify available and booked venues, as well as have up-to-the-minute event details, all in one place.

Marylou says: “Departments are thrilled with the new system because they have so many customizing options to give their calendars their own look. And they know they can rely on finding all campus events in one place. All the problems we used to have with double bookings, moving classes – having to check and
update multiple calendars whenever there was a schedule change – are gone now.”

Conclusion

Upgrading to 25Live for academic and event scheduling has transformed George Mason University’s previously haphazard calendaring system, integrating and streamlining the entire scheduling process while allowing each department options to tailor their calendars to suit their needs. Now, departments and university administrators can see what’s happening throughout the entire university on one central calendar. Problems with double bookings and schedule changes are virtually nonexistent. And emergency schedule changes, such as snow day closures, are managed with ease.

About George Mason University

George Mason Campus
© Photo provided by George Mason University
George Mason was originally founded in 1966 as George Mason College. It was reestablished as George Mason University in 1972, with a long-range mandate to expand into a major regional institution. Today, George Mason serves the entire Northern Virginia region, with campuses in Fairfax, Arlington, and Prince William counties, along with many other instructional sites. And the University recently opened a brand new campus in South Korea.
The school has a total student population of nearly 34,000 and offers 76 undergraduate programs and 124 master’s, doctoral and professional degree programs. George Mason employs close to 1,400 full-time instructional and research faculty. Its ranks have included two Nobel laureates in Economic Science, winners of the James Buchanan (1986) and Vernon Smith (2002) awards, members of the Robinson Professors, a Pulitzer Prize winner, IEEE Centennial Medalists, and recipients of numerous grants and awards, including Fulbright, National Science Foundation, and National Endowment for the Arts awards.

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