The Problem

Clemson University features the academic experience of a top-notch research institution with the tight-knit social environment of a small liberal arts college. With an active student body and campus community, Clemson's calendar wasn't holding up to the task of helping to unite the campus at various events. In fact, the calendar was outdated and showing its age.

At a quick glance, the calendar, which had been built in-house, was serving its basic purpose of displaying events. However, the Clemson calendar suffered from the same fatal flaw we see so often: hardly anyone on campus used it!

In addition to its ineffectiveness, the hassle of maintaining and updating the calendar was taking valuable time away from Clemson staff. The calendar was difficult to customize, lacked social media integration, and could not pull in feeds from event sources across campus. Worse, the time spent working on the calendar wasn't increasing awareness of events, because as we mentioned before, no one frequented the calendar website.

Plus, the calendar on Clemson's main website masqueraded as a master calendar, but in practice, many departments maintained their own calendar system. The calendars themselves varied from Google calendars to in-house technologies designed by grad students. Maintaining disconnected calendars across campus had department staff stretched thin and the master calendar suffered as many major events neglected to be posted on the main site.

Clemson knew it was time for a change.

The Solution

After evaluating a few calendar options, Clemson decided that Localist resolved the challenges presented by their previously fragmented calendar approach. In particular, Localist has had the most impact on Clemson in the following ways:

• Localist's API allows Clemson to unify the previously disorganized department calendar approach with customizable display widgets. One look. One central location. Customization for each campus department.
• A smooth, timesaving transition from the old calendar approach to Localist as feeds from disparate systems can be easily inputted into Localist.
• The layered user permissions in Localist allow Clemson to identify key users to enter their department's events, streamlining the event entry process.
• Localist's integration with Clemson's authentication system makes it easy for faculty, staff and students to sign-up and engage with the calendar using their university ID and password.
• An enhanced user experience for Clemson students through social media with Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare. Social media integration has been proven to increase student calendar use at other Localist universities.

And those are just some of the reasons why Clemson now has a dynamic social calendar, powered by Localist.

The Results

Before the launch, Clemson and Localist worked together to ensure an easy transition from the old system to Localist—a big job made easier by Localist's integrations and API.

Clemson's Creative Services web team summed up the onboard experience, saying "The support from Localist was practically instantaneous. The Localist team has been wonderful, and we're excited to finally have a calendar our faculty, staff, and students can really embrace."

A campus-wide email announcing the new Localist calendar triggered a flood of user sign-ups, with more coming in every day. Clemson is looking forward to the fall, when they expect to see significant increases in usage.