Welcome to the Education Community!

SS Professor

Hello All! I am Dave Schwantes, I am a new Adjunct Professor at Shenandoah University in Winchester, VA and will be teaching Project Management in the upcoming Spring Semester (night job). In my day job I am a PMI certified Project Manager since 2009 and currently a Senior Program Manager leading software development and IT Infrastructure projects for a Federal Government Agency. I am brand new to Smartsheet! I am most familiar with MS Project (eww that other PM tool) however SU is an all Apple school so needed to find a PM tool that plays nice with MacOS, easily accessible for students, and easy to learn. That is what led me to Smartsheet.

• Where do you work and what’s your department/role?
  • Shenandoah University - Adjunct Professor
• How long have you been using Smartsheet?
  • Been exploring SS for 1 month
• How are you using Smartsheet today or planning to in the future?
  • Planning to use Smartsheet as the goto online PM tool for students. Using it as a tool to actually set up a sample project and help students learn about Project Management.
• What else would you like to learn from your peers in the education industry?
  • I see a lot of real life applications of Smartsheet in the comments here, however I am Interested to know if there are others in this Community using Smartsheet as a tool to train students. What types of exercises did you use in your teaching, what has been the experience of your students in learning Smartsheet?

broctawn

Hello from Idaho State University. I work in the Academic Affairs umbrella and have used Smartsheet for many years. I have built systems with sheets, automation, and dashboards to track tutoring usage, peer mentoring contacts, and created a system to track adjunct pay for dual-enrollment instructors and send a letter to them using the document creation feature. I nerd out over designing solutions to labor-intensive tasks by implementing automation, writing complex formulas, and building dashboards to deliver the info in a clean, usable manner.

ShriViz

Hello,

Happy to join a group for a vertical very close to my heart.
Been formally engaged in Education Industry for close to 2 years and working actively on Smartsheet for about 18 months.
Happy to be amongst group of learners and pick some important nuggets from all of you.

Looking forward to it.

Thanks

Shri

Jonathan Jordan

Howdy!

I work for the University of Houston in the College of Natural Science and Mathematics as a Project Director II. Although I am relatively new to Smartsheet, with nearly two years of experience, I am currently finalizing a ticketing system that can be utilized by various departments such as IT, Travel, and Reimbursement Requests. I am eager to gain further insights, ideas, and how-to's from my peers, as I believe there are always better ways to conduct business and I am keen to learn from others' experiences.

fdmcghee

Welcome fellow Coog!

Michfly

Hello! I have been using Smartsheet for a little over a year now. We are really ramping up our use so I plan to learn a lot from this community :)

I work for a NASA program at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. We are using the platform for project management, and will be using it for our fellowship applications and tracking, our research proposals and tracking, and more! Would love any tips and will be searching the community for how others have implemented.

Kate C.

Hi everyone!

I am the Corporate Tax Compliance Manager at the University of Pennsylvania and have been using Smartsheet for about a year and a half. My team primarily utilizes it to create compliance dashboards based on the metrics we collect daily. Additionally, I occasionally use Smartsheet to develop forms and reports.

I have been taking classes through Smartsheet University to discover new ways to simplify our daily workflow and gather actionable metrics. I would love to learn how others in finance within the education industry use Smartsheet. Also, I would be happy to connect on LinkedIn!

Looking forward to connecting!

Michelle Choate 2

Hi everyone! I’m a Senior Manager of Operations and "Smartsheet Guru" if you will. I specialize in software implementation, process optimization, and solutions architecture. While I don’t work directly in education, I’ve worked with universities and schools, helping them build customized solutions to streamline processes and improve collaboration.

I’ve been using Smartsheet for years, from my time at Smartsheet itself to consulting across multiple industries. Right now, I focus on integrating Smartsheet with other systems, optimizing workflows, and driving efficiency across teams.

I’d love to connect with others in the education space to see how Smartsheet is being used for curriculum planning, student tracking, faculty management, or other creative solutions. Looking forward to learning from this community!

Erin Horiuchi Green

Hello @Michelle Choate 2 , @Kate C. , @Michfly , @Jonathan Jordan , @ShriViz , @broctawn and @SS Professor.

Sounds like you all are enjoying your Smartsheet laddering. It would be great to connect and discuss solution and strategies.

The functionality of Pivot and Data Mesh are lackluster and add no value for me.

Below is what I have built in the last year working Pharma and proprietary tool education.

New Client Acquisition Procurement
1) Request Form (Data Shuttle/Alerts/Updates/Document/Approval/Sheet Changes/Archive)
2) Discovery Form (Alerts/Updates/Document/Approval/Archive)
3) Project Plan (Alerts/Updates/Archive)
a) Funding (Document/Sheet Changes/Archive)
b) Funding Review and Approval (Document/Sheet Changes/Archive)
c) Demand Specification Form (Document/Approval/Archive)
d) Design
d) Test (similar framework to Software Platform Upgrade Migration)
e) Rollout (Alerts/Updates/Document/Approval)
f) Closeout (Alerts/Updates/Document/Approval)

Software Platform Upgrade Migration
1) Test Script Template (+130 generated via API)
2) Test Scripts scheduled in Phases via Folders
2) Phase Reporting Metrics
3) Deviation and DEV Allocation Reporting Metrics
4) Dashboards (i.e., Executive, Manager, Pilot Tester, DEV)
5) WorkApp

Application Support Ticketing Solutions
1) Demand Specification Form (Document/Approval/Archive)
2) Design
3) Test (similar framework to Software Platform Upgrade Migration)
4) Request Form (Data Shuttle/Alerts/Updates/Document/Approval/Sheet Changes/Sheet to Sheet/Archive)
2) Behavior Reporting Metrics
3) Dashboards (i.e., Executive, Manager, Requestor, DEV)
5) WorkApp

I will update later with the Learning & Development Platform later.

awilson

Greetings, Everyone!

• I work for West Chester University of Pennsylvania (WCU) as an IT Project and Relationship Manager. Having worked in private enterprise technology (infrastructure, apps dev, cybersec) project management and training for over 35 years, my PM role in Higher Ed is totally new and different. My goals are to work within the terrific IS&T team to assist with managing our department's project portfolio while my main efforts are to share and help implement project management best practices where/how they make sense and can make a difference!
• As a project manager for over 25 years, this is the first time I have used Smartsheet. Coming from MS-Project Enterprise and most recently Wrike user environments, Smartsheet is brand new to me! It is flexible, powerful, and potentially useful in so many ways, but then again I need to learn how to distinguish what can be accomplished with the Business license we subscribe. I am currently finishing up the Smartsheet University intro courses.
• Today we use Smartsheet to track/facilitate a number of business processes within IT, and to manage some specific projects. What we do in the future depends upon what functionality is available, and how much we can share amongst us here at WCU, and compliment other applications in use.
• I am looking to network with others in higher ed with the same situation as mine to share ideas on how to best use Smartsheet!

Audrey Wilson

Jonathan Jordan

@Erin Horiuchi Green Wow, you have acheived quite a bit. Im in the testing phase of building our ticketing system for the college. Hopefully, we will be able to go live within the next week.

Erin Horiuchi Green

Hello @Jonathan Jordan ,

Happy to connect. erin.horiuchi@syneoshealth.com

Learning Center and Ticketing Tool has the greatest value for the individual contributor so far.

New Hire Onboarding and Quarterly Review has the greatest value for people managers so far.

The last 2 weeks we have been getting some advanced Metric requests and have been hitting some limitations with Smartsheet.

Nicole Merrill

I'm excited to join this Education Community!

As of April 2024, I was privileged to be hired in the newly created position of Program Coordinator for Cancer Center Research at Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, NY. I started using Smartsheet in January 2025 and will complete my initial engagement plan by end of March. I am currently using Smartsheet to coordinate our upcoming Cancer Center Research Week and Annual Retreat event. My goal in 2025 is to also build a comprehensive database for managing our institution's Cancer Center Pilot Grants and Progress Reports. This database will act as the structure upon which our Cancer Center will work toward achieving NCI-designation (National Cancer Institute) - the gold star standard of Cancer Centers!

I look forward to connecting and collaborating with my Education peers!