Midway University, located in Midway, Kentucky, is a private, non-profit liberal arts college founded in 1847 by Dr. Lewis L. Pinkerton as the first school in the United States to serve orphaned and disadvantaged women. Today, Midway University is a leader in providing educational opportunities for men and women who wish to continue their education. Adult undergraduate and graduate programs are offered in an accelerated format where students attend classes in the evening or online. The main campus day program still operates as Kentucky’s only women’s college.
Midway University’s dispersed student body poses an interesting challenge to the institution as they look to offer a collaborative education experience. To solve for this challenge, Midway University selected RingCentral for its flexible, multi-modal communications solution, RingCentral Office. A complete replacement of Midway’s previous legacy on-premise system, RingCentral Office enables faculty to hold virtual office hours, conduct online sessions, video conferencing, and interact with students from any location at any time from their mobile devices and laptops.
While the earlier legacy system did not support mobility and communication needs beyond voice, with RingCentral, Midway University has anytime, anywhere communication, messaging, and collaboration capabilities across the entire faculty, staff and student body. This is an extraordinary improvement, both in terms of technology and the University’s ability to provide an exceptional education for its students, many of whom work remotely.
Faculty and staff can now easily communicate with students using their personal mobile devices without disclosing their private phone number. Additionally, they can interact by voice, text, or video from any location. Every faculty member also has their own conference bridge so they can flexibly conduct sessions at their convenience.
Midway University is a great example of how RingCentral helps academic institutions achieve seamless mobile communications and collaboration, which legacy systems are incapable of doing. Two key components of Midway University’s current strategic plan call for it to strengthen technological resources and enhance support services. Becoming RingCentral users is a significant accomplishment toward both of those goals. With a cloud-based platform delivering mobile-centric communications solutions, Midway University can now focus on delivering a superior educational experience regardless of where their faculty, staff and students may be located.
Originally published Apr 26, 2016, updated Aug 12, 2020
