ACC is the first community college to be selected as a finalist for Salesforce.org’s “Excellence in Institutional Efficiency Award”! The Summit Awards are an opportunity to recognize the most innovative and forward-thinking trailblazers, and this award is given to a college or university that is using Salesforce.org Education Cloud to increase operational efficiency in one or more areas of campus, providing a holistic connected campus experience.

Voting for this award is open to the public. Faculty and staff are encouraged to vote online by March 17th.

Find step-by-step instructions for how to vote online. There is no need to vote for all three categories to cast your ballot.

Why ACC is Nominated

ACC’s Office of Experiential Learning and Office of Information Technology streamlined their internship intake and agreement process by piloting a Salesforce customer relationship management (CRM) system.

This Salesforce CRM system allows ACC to:

• Meet compliance regulations
• Automate and maintain employer contacts and internship opportunities
•  Collect important student demographic data

Analyzing this data will help predict internship trends, gaps, and solutions for ACC students. This system is truly unique and ACC continues to make this the most user-friendly tool for our faculty, students, and employers who participate in Experiential Learning.

Salesforce’s out-of-the-box integration experience allowed a small team of newly-trained Salesforce administrators to roll out a new internship process within weeks. This quick turnaround time allowed both ACC employees to collaborate and find new and innovative ways to enhance the system, resulting in a higher functioning, intuitive, and more individualized user experience. ACC’s Experiential Learning team of only four employees can now effectively serve hundreds of students and over 500 external partner accounts and faculty members, while storing and maintaining regulatory documentation. 

By the end of its first semester of implementation, Experiential Learning grew its employer partner accounts by five times, contributing to student success and graduation rates. 

The real-time app has made it easier to communicate with the Employer Partners and track information about internships such as: 

• The number of posted positions
• Where interns have been placed
• Which opportunities were filled or unfilled by ACC students
• How many were paid vs unpaid
• Total  average wage across the college and by area of study

By the Spring of 2021, ACC will be able to contribute an entire year’s worth of qualitative data to the National Association for Colleges and Employers (NACE), who in 2019 put out a call for research on the topic of paid vs. unpaid internships. ACC hopes to not only assist in filling information gaps, but to begin thinking critically about finding solutions to those problems for a more equitable and accessible experience for students.