Stellic, Quinnipiac University’s new progress planning platform, is receiving complaints from students and staff as the fall semester course registration period comes to an end.
Provost Debra Liebowitz announced in August that Stellic would replace the Self-Service “My Progress” tab.
Stellic is designed to lay out which classes students need to graduate, but the platform has, in many instances, inaccurately reported students’ progress.
“I’m supposed to be graduating in May and Stellic changed my graduation year to May 2026 instead of May 2024,” senior history major Julianna Mennella said. “It’s actually funny because on the website, it said (I) had five credits left; graduation date May 2026. I was like, ‘OK, that doesn’t make any sense.’”
Fearing that she wouldn’t graduate on time, Mennella emailed multiple people to correct the platform’s errors. Eventually, the mistakes were corrected.
“I’ve never had a problem with advising, it’s actually been pretty easy,” Mennella said. “My advisors have been wonderful, but then (Stellic) kind of changed everything.”
Liebowitz also reported hearing that Stellic does not always show transfer credits properly.
“We have heard some frustrations, some come from students, some come from faculty,” Liebowitz said. “One of the things that we’re going to do as the registration period is over, is we’ll be doing a survey and getting feedback.”
Liebowitz said that she is considering focus groups as a way to understand what the experience has been like for users.
“We want to hear people’s thoughts. We want to see how we can make (Stellic) better,” Liebowitz said.
Like students, some advisors are struggling to use the new program and are dealing with an array of technical difficulties.
“We all tried our best to really have all programs maps set up and ready to go for advising,” said Lauren Sardi, the executive director of the collaborative for interdisciplinary integrative studies and a professor of sociology and women’s and gender studies. “There’s just so much that still needs to be tweaked during this given semester because it’s new.”
Sardi said she is trying to stay optimistic about the program’s future, but she and other academic advisors are juggling between Self-Service and Stellic to figure out where students stand in their progress.
Students also have to use Self-Service and Stellic together to schedule their classes. Although students must track their academic progress in Stellic, they still have to register for classes on Self-Service. Advisors and students are also complaining about this issue.
“It could be better where the registration happens in the same system, but that’s not what Stellic does,” Liebowitz said. “We knew that when we made the decision to bring (Stellic) on and when everyone evaluated it, they still felt like what it did bring was significant enough that it was worthwhile.”
Despite these issues, some students said they liked how Stellic lays out academic programs.
“I liked the aesthetic design of it with the pop-down menus,” said Katie Spedalle, a junior psychology major.
Although the website looks more organized, the technical difficulties are not easy to get past for some.
“I understand they’re trying to make it easier,” Mennella said. “It’s just nothing is in the correct place.”
Mennella said she and many of her friends feel that it is not worth trying to learn how the new program works before they graduate in the spring.
“I only have a semester left here, I’m not even going to pay attention to it,” Mennella said. “I’m just going to go back to regular old Self Service.”
