Barnard College Builds Flexible, Student Centered Housing Operations with StarRez

For years, Barnard College’s housing lottery was a deeply familiar, in-person tradition. Students gathered at a designated location, waited for their timeslot, and selected a room when their turn arrived. The process worked, but it required significant staff coordination and asked students to be physically present at a specific time and place.

When Barnard implemented StarRez, the housing team saw an opportunity to preserve the structure and fairness of the lottery while bringing the experience online. What began as a move from in-person room selection to digital self-selection has since evolved into a broader story of flexibility, automation, reporting, and campus-wide collaboration.

“What I like about StarRez is its customization. You’re not stuck in the box of how the software works. You’re able to build the exact solutions you need, and then you can change them when you need to.”

- Matt Kingston, Associate Director for Housing Operations at Barnard College

Complex Housing Processes Needed More Flexibility

Barnard’s room selection process has always required careful planning. Returning students create groups, prioritize spaces, and select from a mix of corridor-style rooms, suites, and other housing options. Priority is based on seniority, and students need clear information about where they stand, when they can select, and what options remain available.

Before StarRez, much of that complexity depended on an in-person process. Students studying abroad had to designate proxies. Staff had to manage live questions and logistics. And unexpected events could disrupt the entire process.

"During our first year with StarRez, we had a huge snowstorm during the Lottery,” said Matt Kingston, Associate Director for Housing Operations at Barnard College.“Previously this would have required rescheduling all the in-person selection days, but thanks to the process moving online with StarRez, students could pick without even leaving their rooms.

That moment proved the value of moving room selection into StarRez. But Barnard’s story did not stop there.

For roughly eight years, Barnard continued using a StarRez-powered process that allowed students to form groups by size and select through a series of lottery rounds. The structure gave students the chance to regroup if they could not secure a suite, but over time the team recognized that some students, especially rising sophomores, felt like they were repeatedly missing out as they moved through multiple rounds.

The result was a new challenge: how could Barnard preserve flexibility while creating a room selection experience that felt more streamlined and student-centered?

Configurable Tools That Evolve with Barnard’s Needs

Barnard built a new PortalX room selection process that reflects what the team has learned over years of online selection. StarRez’s resident self-service tools support room selection and other student-facing processes through an online portal experience, while housing teams can configure workflows around their institutional rules and priorities.

Previously, students selected housing through multiple lottery rounds organized by group size, which sometimes left students repeatedly reshuffling groups and trying again. Barnard wanted a process that still offered flexibility but felt simpler and more transparent for students.

“Thanks to the configurability of the PortalX roommate group page, we’ve built a process for students to continue to make and change groups even after the lottery numbers have been generated,” Kingston said.

As groups change, Barnard can use update events to recalculate lottery numbers and selection times. That added flexibility helps students adjust without feeling trapped in a single group configuration.

“The idea is to still provide flexibility, but not have students feel like they have to keep trying again and again through multiple lottery rounds,” Kingston said. “Hopefully it will result in better student satisfaction for the process.”

For Barnard, this is one of the clearest examples of StarRez’s long-term value. The system supported the original transition online, sustained the process for years, and now allows the team to redesign the experience as student expectations change.

“What I love about StarRez and PortalX is that it really gives you the ability to create and customize what your institution needs.”

- Matt Kingston, Associate Director for Housing Operations at Barnard College

Extending Automation Beyond Room Selection

As Barnard’s housing operations have evolved, Kingston’s team has looked for more ways to automate repetitive work. His mantra for the year: “set it and forget it automation.”

One example is music practice room reservations. Barnard originally implemented StarRez Appointments for check-in. Like many institutions, the team then asked how else the tool could support students throughout the academic year. StarRez Appointments supports self-service booking, online management of appointment processes, real-time availability, and dashboard visibility.  

Barnard used those capabilities to create a reservation process for the music practice rooms in their residence halls. Instead of coming to the office to sign up in person, students can reserve practice times in advance. The team can also use data fields to give music majors early access and limit how many timeslots students reserve each week, helping create fairer access.

“Instead of requiring students to line up each week in person, they can now sign up online in advance.” Kingston said. “Student satisfaction has definitely improved with them being able to sign up in online and in advance.”

The setup also saves staff time. “I create the time slots at the start of each semester,” Kingston said. “And then I don’t need to worry about music practice room sign-ups for the rest of the year.”

Automating Room Condition Reports

Barnard has also made major progress with room condition reports, also known as inventory inspections. StarRez’s Inventory & Inspections tools support online room condition tracking, resident-uploaded notes and photos, automatic resident notifications, and reporting that helps teams track condition and damage data.  

Previously, creating room condition reports was a manual and time-consuming process. Staff had to determine which students were new, who changed rooms, and who needed a new inspection form each semester.

Using data subscriptions, Barnard now automates much of that workflow. When students check in, they receive an automatic welcome email with information about their room condition report, the deadline to submit it, their room keys, and other building information. The system also generates a new inspection only when needed, such as when a student moves into a new room.

“The data subscription is generating new inventory inspections for students if they don’t already have an inventory inspection for that room space within that term,” Kingston said.

Automated email reminders have made an especially clear impact. According to Kingston, Barnard moved from roughly one-third of students submitting room condition reports to closer to a 90% completion rate.

“We have gone from a third of our students submitting room condition reports last year, to probably closer to a 90% completion rate this year thanks to StarRez’s Email Scheduler.”

- Matt Kingston, Associate Director for Housing Operations at Barnard College

Real-Time Reporting for Campus Partners

Barnard’s use of StarRez also extends beyond the housing office. The team uses StarRez reporting, exports, and the StarRez API to share housing information with campus partners. StarRez supports reporting and analytics that help teams share dashboards, schedule communications, and provide data across functional areas, while its partner and API capabilities support integrations with external tools and scheduled interfaces.  

During the pandemic, Barnard’s leadership needed timely visibility into which students remained in campus housing and which students had checked out. That need led the team to build reporting workflows that continue to support the institution today.

“Ever since then, a lot of our partner departments across campus have come to rely on the information we can export from StarRez.” Kingston said.

Campus Safety can access building rosters. Health Services can track which students live on or off-campus for vaccine requirements. Admissions can use housing data to understand available capacity and make decisions about transfer students. The Res Life office can analyze applications, assignments, and occupancy forecasts in ways that were not feasible when data lived primarily in spreadsheets.

“Before we had StarRez, when our data lived in spreadsheets, it just wasn’t feasible to make the connections we needed to forecast occupancy. Now we’re able to do that quickly and easily, but just as importantly, we’re able to share reliable housing data across campus. From Admissions and Campus Safety to Health Services and residence life staff, everyone can access the information they need to make better decisions.”

- Matt Kingston, Associate Director for Housing Operations at Barnard College

Supporting Emergency Relocations with Temporary Spaces

Another important part of Barnard’s story is its use of Temporary Spaces within StarRez, a way to support quick reshuffling when students need alternate accommodations, including situations where maintenance or other needs require a temporary move.  

For Barnard, the feature became critical during an emergency. After a fire in one residence hall, the team needed to relocate more than 60 students across campus. Kingston estimates the process saves at least 30 minutes per student compared with the manual communication and tracking that would have been required before.

“I was able to figure out in the middle of the night how to use this new feature to temporarily reassign around 60 students across campus when we had a fire,” Kingston said.

Since then, Barnard has built Temporary Spaces into its reports and communication workflows. When a temporary assignment is created, the appropriate community director is automatically notified. Front desk staff can see updated information much more quickly, without relying on phone calls, handwritten notes, or manually updated rosters.

“Using the temporary space feature helped us make shared those placements instantaneously across campus and automate the communications to students and staff members,” Kingston said.

A More Flexible Foundation for the Future

For Barnard, the value of StarRez is not just that it supports today’s housing processes. It’s that the platform gives the team room to evolve. That flexibility matters as student expectations continue to shift. While Barnard’s original online lottery process worked well for years, the team can build something new without starting over or changing systems.

“Our room selection process worked for the past 8 years,” Kingston said. “But now we’re able to improve that process based on changes in student needs and desires.”

From room selection to practice room reservations, room condition reports, reporting, and emergency relocations, Barnard continues to find new ways to use StarRez to support the full residential experience.

“With StarRez & PortalX, the sky’s the limit for what you can build!”

- Matt Kingston, Associate Director for Housing Operations at Barnard College

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