How the University of Connecticut Streamlined Concurrent Enrollment Administration and Improved the Registration Experience for All

Who: The University of Connecticut’s Early College Experience (ECE) program

Concurrent Enrollment Count: 19,886 (2024-25 AY)

Challenges: non-stop administration, increasing workforce demands, dropped registrations, fee collection, and timely course registration

Benefits: Significant reduction in administrative processing, improved high school partner experience, improved student and parent experience, expanded program capacity, and ability to support increased enrollment growth

A Storied Concurrent Enrollment Program

With the oldest and longest-running concurrent enrollment program in the United States, the University of Connecticut’s (UConn’s) Office of Early College Programs has seen it all. What started in 1955 with six partner schools, now serves almost 20,000 students annually, enrolled in 35,000 courses through nearly 200 partner schools across Connecticut.

Similarly, the Office of Early College Programs Assistant Director, Jessica Dunn, and Executive Director, Christopher Todd, have their own personal connections with concurrent enrollment. Not only did Dunn and Todd both take concurrent enrollment courses through UConn as high school students, but Dunn became a university student worker for the UConn ECE program before joining the office full-time in 2012. Todd, who has served as Executive Director since 2022, was previously a longtime high school teacher, including serving as an instructor for UConn’s concurrent enrollment courses.

Todd, Dunn, and the rest of the ECE team truly understand the significance of offering dual credit opportunities to high school students who want to challenge themselves with rigorous and meaningful college coursework. And while UConn’s Early College Experience (ECE) Program has consistently provided a top-notch education, managing enrollments hasn’t always been easy for program staff, university partners, students, parents, or high school community members.

The Struggles of Old Manual Processes

When Dunn began working at UConn ECE in 2008, managing concurrent enrollment applications and registrations was a fully manual, paper-based process.

“High school Site Representatives compiled paper applications, UConn ECE Program Staff manually entered each application into our database, and the Registrar's Office had to matriculate and create accounts for each student,” Dunn describes. “Even at that time, with a much smaller population, it was a very cumbersome process.”

Then, in 2014, UConn ECE implemented a generic digital enrollment software to alleviate some of the processing stress. However, because that solution couldn’t address the full needs of a concurrent enrollment program such as UConn’s, there were still too many administrative gaps. Uploading the consent form and selecting courses had to be done separately, and the staff still had to manually matriculate every application into the program.

Between opening one registration window, closing out the process for each student, and transitioning into the next window, staff were managing concurrent enrollment registration 12 months out of the year. Not only did this process affect the university and high school staff, but students and their guardians would get deterred and drop off during the enrollment process.

“Unfortunately, we lost a lot of students along the way,” says Dunn. “It was just too difficult for students to navigate, and the time period between steps was too extensive.”

Another significant issue with the previous systems was managing payments, as students would be registered in a course before submitting payment through a separate avenue. The UConn ECE Program Office, alongside the Bursar’s Office, then had to go back and collect course enrollment fees from students, with varying success. “We're still in a situation where the University is working to close out and clean up outstanding issues from the pre-DualEnroll years,” Todd explains.

Between these issues and the need to scale for continued enrollment growth, the UConn Early College Experience team knew they had to make a change.

The Benefits of Purpose-Built Software for Concurrent Enrollment 

In addition to improving systems within their own department, UConn ECE needed to simplify the concurrent enrollment experience for other university departments, like the Registrar’s Office, Bursar’s Office, and Information Technology Office, as well as their external high school partners. UConn first learned about DualEnroll from meeting team members at NACEP conferences over the years. During the formal vendor adoption period, it became clear to the UConn ECE Program Office that DualEnroll was the leading solution explicitly built for dual credit programs.

Learning that DualEnroll could manage registration and enrollment processes from start to finish, including payments, and even integrate with the university’s wider student information system (SIS) were key factors in UConn’s decision-making. DualEnroll’s dedication to collaborating with its college partners to meet their unique needs was also an important value that helped build trust in moving forward with the new software and partnership.

“We needed a system that was a one-stop shop to support all aspects of our unique program while reducing the workload and staffing demands on other University offices," Dunn explains. "It was also critical to give our high school partners a streamlined interface where students could log in once to apply and select courses, and then make payment seamlessly."

Reduced Workloads and Increased Features

The implementation process took time and, as with all iterative processes, involved a learning curve across program stakeholders and partners. However, the new ease and clear benefits of moving to DualEnroll were evident early on.

Having DualEnroll as a central hub has enabled UConn Early College Experience to digitally collect information and guide students through a straightforward registration and enrollment process. Meanwhile, what used to be an all-year, 12-month effort by the university staff to support registration is now a three-and-a-half-month focus spread out in chunks across the year.

Partner schools and their instructors have instant access and visibility into student statuses, while next steps for college staff are automatically routed to each user and outlined in summary views. UConn ECE has found that DualEnroll’s built-in messaging, which enables them to send reminders to students and parents about submitting consent forms and payments, further speeds up processes. Todd also notes that DualEnroll’s helpdesk–which is open to all users, including students, parents, and high school staff–has been a huge benefit, helping support the program’s ability to provide a positive customer service experience.

“We're essentially enrolling the same number of students as our Storrs campus undergraduate population, and we're able to do that within a couple weeks of closing out our partner school registrations,” says Todd. UConn ECE was even able to add a new spring add/drop window because of the ability to easily process requests on a shorter, more reliable timeline.

Continued Enrollment Growth with Reduced Staffing Stress

Over the last three years, UConn Early College Experience has seen a 43% increase in unique student enrollments. Yet, even as they grew from 12,500 to almost 20,000 students in a short period of time, the team’s workload, under DualEnroll, remained relatively unchanged.

“There’s no way we would have been able to maintain the seamlessness of the registration process with growth like that if we didn't have DualEnroll as the facilitator,” says Todd.

Previously, not only would UConn ECE itself need to hire five to eight student workers to help input data, but the Registrar's Office would hire special staff just to process the ECE student applications and enrollments. Those extra hours of work are no longer necessary, allowing the university to maintain its smaller staff and freeing student workers to focus on providing a higher level of customer service instead.

“We worried about what we would do if we weren’t spending all hours of the day manually processing students, wondering if this product would replace us, but that was not the case at all,” adds Dunn. “It’s provided us with the opportunity to enhance and build on other aspects of our program that we weren't previously able to focus on because we didn't have the time or capacity.”

“Beyond our ECE office, our high school partners now have much more access than ever before,” says Todd. “They feel like they have a better handle on the program and are better able to support students as they need.” Todd has noticed that this positive experience for partner schools contributes to their likelihood of turning to the University of Connecticut first when seeking to expand access to concurrent enrollment courses for their students.

A Seamless Student and Parent Experience

The feedback from parents and guardians of students pursuing UConn coursework through the ECE Program before and after DualEnroll has also been night and day. Dunn explains that the experience used to fall short of UConn’s overall standards and reflect poorly on the university. Now, with DualEnroll, it’s been a much more positive experience for the Connecticut high school community.

“It’s been really fun to have a conversation with a parent who had an older child who went through the program with our old paper-based registration process, followed by a younger sibling going through the updated registration process. They all say it’s so much easier than it used to be,” says Todd. “The user experience for our students and families via DualEnroll has been seamless."

Dunn and Todd are now confident that UConn ECE students are getting the best first impression of the university and feeling better supported in their dual credit experience. Seeing the data that 30-35% of all of the University of Connecticut's incoming freshmen are UConn ECE program alumni supports that.

Why Investing in Software Pays Off

For those considering investing in software to manage dual credit or concurrent enrollment, Todd advises against being deterred by the potential challenges of change management or the reality of upfront cost.

“Given the fiscal challenges that we're (Institutions of Higher Education) all facing, nationally, it's often cheaper to invest in a process or program infrastructure than to be reliant on continued ability to expand staff capacity,” Todd says.

Todd believes that, especially when you factor in the increasing frequency of hiring freezes, the training requirements and turnover of seasonal workers, and the limitations of data access for student workers, investing in software that can seamlessly support a growing program is usually an easier sell for organizational leadership.

“Many concurrent enrollment programs have offices of one or two individual people who are trying to do it all, and I imagine they don't have time to be innovative in building their program or support their students and instructors as they would like,” adds Dunn. “Using DualEnroll has definitely opened up those opportunities for improvement and enhancement of our program.”

If you’d like to learn more about how DualEnroll could help streamline your college’s dual or concurrent enrollment program, we’d love to connect.