Saint Anselm College Unifies Housing and Residence Life Data with StarRez

Housing and ResLife Data Lived in Too Many Places

Before StarRez, Saint Anselm College did not have a dedicated housing management platform. Housing selection, roommate matching, move-in, inspections, closing, program tracking, and campus partner communication all relied on a patchwork of spreadsheets, Qualtrics forms, paper rosters, manual reports, phone calls, and institutional memory.

“Saint Anselm College didn’t have housing software before StarRez, so moving to one centralized system was a major step forward for our team,” said Christine Gallardo, Director, Residential Life and Education at Saint Anselm College.

For a highly residential campus, that lack of a shared system created more than administrative inconvenience. It meant the people supporting students often had to work from separate documents, downloaded reports, or information that could quickly become outdated. Housing operations and Residential Life were deeply connected in practice, but the data supporting that work was not always unified in one place.

That mattered because Saint Anselm’s model depends on close collaboration. Residential Life and Housing operate as one unit, and staff often need to understand both the operational and educational sides of a student’s residential experience. A room assignment, a break stay approval, a program attendance record, a health and safety inspection, or a roommate concern may begin as separate workflows, but together they tell a larger story about a student’s life on campus.

“The biggest benefit of StarRez now is transparency of data. Instead of information living in separate spreadsheets or with one person, Housing, Residential Life, and our campus partners can work from the same real-time information and make decisions faster.”‍

‍- Christine Gallardo, Director, Residential Life and Education at Saint Anselm College

Before StarRez, even routine processes could become time-consuming because the data was not centralized. Housing selection happened over the phone. Staff called students, crossed rooms off a list, and manually moved down the selection order.

The same pattern showed up in roommate matching. Staff collected student preferences through Qualtrics, built pivot tables, and manually compared students across categories like substance-free, honors, and general housing.

“We managed roommates by hand using a lot of spreadsheets,” said Christine. “What took me a week and a half, if not two weeks, became a three-day process with StarRez.”

One Platform for the Full Residential Picture

Saint Anselm implemented StarRez in 2023 due to an institutional decision to move to Workday, which prompted a need to support housing-related charges and records. For the Residential Life and Education department, the opportunity was much broader: StarRez could become the shared operating system for the full residential experience.

Today, Saint Anselm uses StarRez to support housing selection, roommate matching, billing-related workflows, communications, inspections, move-in, programming, leadership applications, medical housing accommodation applications, visitor management, and future conference and event operations.

StarRez’s higher education platform is designed to bring housing applications, room selection, communication, occupancy management, and resident support workflows together into one unified system. For Saint Anselm, that centralization has become the core value.

The student-facing portal also changed the student experience. Instead of waiting for a phone call during housing selection, students can now move through a self-service process. StarRez PortalX supports student self-service while giving staff real-time control over the housing journey.

That same shift from dependency to direct access shows up in staff workflows. For instance, lottery number generation previously involved coordination with IT before the Residential Life team could move forward. Now, the team manages it directly in StarRez.

“With StarRez, I can create lottery numbers in just a few minutes. Previously, the process required coordination across departments and typically took about a week to complete.”

- Christine Gallardo, Director, Residential Life and Education at Saint Anselm College

Shared Visibility, Faster Decisions, and More Time with Students

The biggest benefit for Saint Anselm is not simply that individual tasks are faster, though many are. The larger impact is that Housing and ResLife now operate from a shared, trusted view of student and residential data.

That visibility changes how staff work together. Rather than asking one person to pull a report, check a spreadsheet, or confirm whether a list is current, staff can go to StarRez and find the information they need. Dashboards, reports, and mobile access make data much easier to use across roles and departments.

“StarRez is not just a housing software; it’s a college software.”

- Christine Gallardo, Director, Residential Life and Education at Saint Anselm College

For campus partners, the difference is especially important. In the past, break stay information might be sent as a list to Campus Safety, Physical Plant, or other partners. If a student was added late or a room changed, the list could become outdated.

Now, that information lives in StarRez.

“The team loves having a single, real-time dashboard,” said Christine. “It’s automatically updated, they can go back to it, they can download it, they can review, and it always updates on the spot.”

Saint Anselm also uses StarRez Go to extend that data beyond the office. StarRez Go gives staff access to housing tools from a mobile device, including check-ins, inspections, maintenance, and other on-the-go workflows. For Saint Anselm, that means Campus Safety, the Dean of Students Office, and duty staff can quickly check student details, approved break stays, and emergency contact information without relying on physical rosters or static downloads.

That instant visibility has helped improve move-in as well. With more accurate check-in data, the team can better understand who has arrived and who may still need follow-up. Gallardo said Saint Anselm’s no-show numbers, which were often really missed check-ins at a table, were nearly cut in half the first year the college used StarRez.

“Our numbers for no-shows, which were really just people we missed at the check-in table, were almost cut in half the first year we used StarRez.”

- Christine Gallardo, Director, Residential Life and Education at Saint Anselm College

Connecting Operations and Education

Unifying Housing and ResLife data has also helped Saint Anselm connect administrative work with student engagement. Programs are a clear example.

Before StarRez, each area used its own programming form. If Christine wanted a full picture of programming across the department, she had to gather separate Google Forms, compile responses, and manually create summaries. Now, program data is centralized and reportable.

“Programming has been incredibly valuable because everything now lives in one place. I can search by any term I need and pull reports directly from the system.”

- Christine Gallardo, Director, Residential Life and Education at Saint Anselm College

StarRez Program Management is designed to help teams manage program creation, tracking, attendance, and reporting in one place. At Saint Anselm, that means staff can use dashboards and summary reports to understand what programs are happening, who is attending, and what improvements may be needed.

This is where the value of one system becomes more strategic. Housing data shows where students live. ResLife data shows how they are engaging. Together, those insights help staff support the full residential journey, from assignment and move-in to programming, safety, wellbeing, and end-of-year closing.

The StarRez Community Management solution also supports this broader view by consolidating resident interactions and critical details like bookings and work orders into comprehensive resident profiles. That aligns with Saint Anselm’s direction: moving away from disconnected records and toward a more complete understanding of each student’s residential experience.

Reducing Administrative Load So Staff Can Focus on Students

The operational time savings still matter. They are what make the broader student support work possible.

Housing selection no longer requires roughly nine hours of staff phone calls. Roommate matching no longer depends on days of spreadsheet sorting. Health and safety inspections no longer require the same level of manual review and follow-up. StarRez Inventory & Inspections supports paperless room management and inspection workflows, helping teams streamline room condition processes.

Communications have also become easier to manage. With StarRez Communications, teams can use more efficient tools for resident communication. At Saint Anselm, saved templates and scheduled messages help reduce the burden of remembering every reminder, follow-up, and notification.

“I schedule it and forget about it,” said Christine. “Automated messages minimize the human error of, ‘Did I send that? I can’t remember.’”

For Christine, that reduction in mental load is one of the most meaningful changes. StarRez helps keep the department’s information, communications, and next steps organized.

“I see StarRez almost like a personal assistant. Before, we were chasing information across spreadsheets, forms, and emails. Now, everything is organized in one place, and the system helps us keep the work moving.”

- Christine Gallardo, Director, Residential Life and Education at Saint Anselm College

What’s Next: Extending the Unified Data Model Across Campus

After several years as a StarRez Community Member, Saint Anselm continues to expand its use of StarRez. The college recently added visitor management and is exploring conference and event functionality. StarRez Community Management includes tools such as Program Management, Visitor Tracking, Duty Logs, and Interactions, while StarRez Conference & Events supports campus event and guest operations.

The direction is consistent: bring more student and campus life workflows into one shared system so staff do not have to rely on separate forms, spreadsheets, or one-off reports.

For Saint Anselm, StarRez has become more than a housing platform. It is a shared data foundation for Housing, Residential Life, Student Affairs, and campus partners who all contribute to the student experience.

By unifying Housing and ResLife data in StarRez, Saint Anselm College has created a more transparent, collaborative, and student-centered residential operation. The result is faster workflows, fewer information gaps, stronger campus partnerships, and more time for the work that matters most: supporting students throughout their full residential journey.

Ready to unify housing operations and residential life into one single platform? Learn more about StarRez for higher education.