1. All Aboard the Naviance Express:
Encouraging Your Entire School
Community to Use Naviance
Betsy Stangel, College Coordinator
Mount Carmel Academy, New Orleans, Louisiana

2. Why Should You Get Everyone
Involved?
Use and support of your own school
community enables you to use Naviance to its
potential.
Purpose today is to briefly explain
(1) our school’s usage,
(2) the tactics we use to get our community to
use the program,
(3) our plan for the next steps,
(4) and sharing some lessons learned along
the way.

3. Mount Carmel Academy’s
History of Naviance Usage

4. Why Mount Carmel Academy first
implemented Naviance
Mount Carmel
Academy is located in
the Lakeview area of
New Orleans and on
August 29, 2005 our
school sustained a
near fatal blow as a
result of a levee
breach during
Hurricane Katrina less
than one mile from our
campus.

5. Why Mount Carmel Academy first
implemented Naviance
Campus was inundated with
ten feet of flood waters and
school operations were
halted at that physical
location for an entire
semester.

6. Why Mount Carmel Academy first
implemented Naviance
Three main issues:
(1)Difficulties with communication,
(2) The need to send data for
current students to register at new
schools, and
(3) Senior college applications.
As a result Naviance was
incorporated into our
emergency preparedness
plan.

7. Working in High School College Advising
in New Orleans Post-Katrina
Reaction of students involved
polar opposites:
(1) from getting as far away
from there as possible, to (2)
staying home in case it
happens again to be close to
family.
Both views required different
advising because students
were now looking at a
significant number of different
colleges and majors.
On the school side we were faced with maintaining
a paperless, remote access method of being able
to handle school submissions.

8. Working in High School College Advising
in New Orleans Post-Katrina
Research at similar schools who used Naviance
helped us determine that it was the program we
were going to use.
Naviance Family Connection and Naviance
Succeed allowed us to address the two pressing
issues that we faced in college advising at our
school.

9. The Rest of the World Post-K
Whatever your reason for discovering Naviance:
•The program is amazing in its capacity to fulfill the needs
of all schools.
• You need to commit to learn about its features that will
work for you.
I attended NSI in 2010 and feel that it changed my
proficiency and confidence. I am not sure if I could have
accomplished what we have done without commitment to
stay updated on the material available.

10. Learning How to Encourage
Your Community to Want to
Get On Board

11. It is Not Just a College Program
We know that Naviance is more than just a
college program, but figuring out how to explain
this to everyone involved is the biggest problem
we faced.
Define the members of your school community
and find the way that Naviance can help them.
Students Teachers as Club Moderators
Parents Coaches
Guidance Counselors Alumni Coordinators
Faculty Planned Giving/Development
Staff Administration

12. Look at Change as Positive
“After the Saints Won the Superbowl” vs. “After the Storm”
Anytime you present something new to your community
it is a challenge:
• change is often resisted,
• faculty already has so many things they are supposed to
do,
• but if you give them a tool to make life easier you’ve won!

13. Suggestions to help make it work
Try not to make it sound like a new
religion and acknowledge that it will not
be everything to all people.
Administrative support is key!

14. Non-Intended Uses Will Surprise You
I am a believer in the philosophy of “there has to be an easier
way” instead of “this is the way we’ve always done it.”
Use this philosophy in working to establish your plan for each
defined member of your community.
Resources:
•Naviance Support via phone and email
•Naviance Network online
•Naviance users in your community

15. We are Making Progress
Now my school community asks me:
“Is there a way we can use Naviance
to do this?”

16. Tickets to the Train For Our
Community Members

17. Administration and Using a Plan of
Implementation
Administration supported implementation….so the
challenge we faced:
(1) Who should have rights to the data in Succeed, and
(2) What features of family connection would be used by
which grade levels each year as we progressed into using
the program.

18. Develop Your Plan of Implementation
To deal with these issues you must:
• Commit to learn the program, and
• Set up a realistic plan of implementation
one step at a time.
The key is making sure it is based in reality as far
as time and commitment of all involved.

19. Balance Community Member
Involvement
We recommend that you have one site administrator and
tight controls on “rights” to access certain activities you
may find yourself faced with leaders and followers that
you will have to figure out how to use to help your cause.
Use your community members:
• make the best use of their talents and strengths
• it helps compensate for those who feel left out

20. Guidance Department
Guidance Counselors were de facto required users and
depending on your school setup the features you
experience may be different.

21. Guidance Department, continued
Things that Guidance Counselors Found Useful:
•Photos
•Same database that the teachers use
•Documents
•Document Library for our online publications
•Email feature
•All Test Scores – feedback says it needs more information
•Surveys
•Journal entries for documenting when needed – all grades levels
•College planning

22. Guidance Department, Continued
Counselor Feedback
The counselors are the best critics and give me ideas at
least once a month to pass on to the Naviance Network.
Remember:
• Naviance is not all things to all people, and
• You need to be open to change and development for
overall department success.

23. Getting Students On Board
Initial set up was difficult because the students
looked at it as a task that they had to do with a
finite term.
(1) Login,
(2) Complete a task,
(3) logout, and
(4) forget.

24. Getting Students On Board,
Continued
Suggestions:
•Do not force it.
•Get the “approval” of the seniors using it to deal with
college planning.
•Use the club moderators for the things that the students
want to know about and things will change for the positive.
•The more carrots instead of sticks we use, the more the
usage increases!

25. Getting Parents on Board
The thought of another login and password to the
parents was daunting.
As student usage has increased their interest has as
well and we now offer the parents the choice of
having a separate login than their child.
Parents reply that they like:
• Career Resources
•College Planning
•Resources that we post online

26. Parent Usage, continued
The ability to have a parent login is offered at : 8th
grade
interviews and 10th
grade interviews and after junior year in
preparation for college planning.
For those without a login: For those with a login:
We keep their data in the student section get benefit of being able to reply
Emails are still sent to surveys for parents**
They can login with their child see multiple children on one
account

27. Things that Interested Teachers
Teachers were the first community members to get on board
because of letters of recommendation for college
submissions.
We have always required all teachers to use it for letters of
recommendation. No paper letters are to leave our school
unless a paper school and we still route through our office.

28. Teacher Usage
The letter of recommendation audience of teachers was limited to a few.
There was little incentive to login and look at data to learn more about
students because they felt like it was not helpful to them.
Things that got their attention Future Involvement Plans
Student photos Career Planning
Journal entries Document Library
Brag Survey Results Biography Pages of teachers
Test Scores
Learning Style Inventories
Resume

29. Club Moderators & Coaches Use Has
Skyrocketed
Use the Group Feature to set up your clubs and athletics
and let the moderators/coaches help you figure out what
they need.
Things that work for these community members:
• Emails to students and parents
• Attachments to those emails such as maps, permission slips
• Ability to track outstanding members via journal entries –
collaborative for moderators, teachers, counselors, students and
parents
• Surveys

30. Next Steps in Our Plan

31. Next Steps in Our Plan
We plan to increase our community of users to use
Success Planning as well as the Alumni Tracker.
We anticipate that the success planning and the student
app will increase the student usage.

32. Lessons Learned & Tips to
Keep Everyone Happy

33. Learn the Program and Take One
Feature at a Time
The fastest way to lose credibility with anyone is to
implement a program and not know enough about it.
We heeded that warning and established our community
of users and set out clear steps of which users would use
the program each year.

34. Learn the Program and Take One
Feature at a Time
Establish what authority you can on specific
areas of the program and use them.
Then learn more and expand.

35. Data Management
Data input is something that we had issues with and in our
experience it should be limited to one or two people
maximum to make sure things are consistent.
Invest the time and find the right help to make sure that
this is done correctly.

36. Feedback and Professional
Development
•Meet to assess usage by each community group
- Example of a major modification using eDocs for our
school this year and it WORKS
•Empower members of your community with feedback
options
•Plan with your administration for updated professional
development on the program and it needs to include an on-
boarding session for new people each year. Be sure to invite
experienced users to that session for the new ones for (1)
refresher and (2) to share good experiences of how they use
it.

37. Parting Words of Advice
• Learn as much as you can about the program
• Use the Naviance Network online and with other
users whenever you get the chance
• Brainstorm with your school community
• Create your plan
• Update your plan every year as you accomplish
that year’s goal and to add new one in its place

38. Betsy Stangel
College Coordinator
Mount Carmel Academy
New Orleans, Louisiana
bstangel@mcacubs.org
504-288-7626, ext. 213

39. Your Feedback Matters!
Thank you for attending the
Naviance Summer Institute 2013!
We greatly appreciate your feedback, please
complete a brief evaluation for this session at:
http://go.naviance.com/evaluations