Jun 4, 2025
Case Study: How Valpo’s Collaboratory Unlocked Campus Expertise with Scholarly
When Valparaiso University set out to connect faculty know‑how with regional industry, they faced a familiar hurdle: decades of CVs, syllabi, and grant records scattered across spreadsheets and siloed systems. In their new Collaboratory Phase One Report, the team shares why they chose Scholarly—and the outsized impact the platform delivered in just a few months. Here’s the story, distilled for our community.
The Challenge
Hidden talent. External partners couldn’t easily discover the right professor for a fast‑moving project.
Multiple data silos. Faculty were re‑entering activity data into several platforms, draining precious hours.
Academic‑to‑industry translation gap. Search terms like “polymer micelles” rarely match a company’s phrasing (“drug‑delivery systems”).
(Source: Collaboratory Phase One Report)
The Scholarly Solution
Valpo loaded 30 pilot faculty into Scholarly and let our AI do the heavy lifting:
Feature | What it did for Valpo |
|---|---|
AI‑powered expertise tagging | Parsed CVs, presentations, and syllabi, then attached plain‑language keywords that resonate with industry partners. |
Allowed staff (and even company reps) to ask natural‑language questions like “Who can help a pharma startup?” and receive curated matches in seconds. | |
Rich faculty profiles | Embedded media, tag panels, and quick‑share links so expertise is one click away from action. |
Early Wins
Real‑time matchmaking. External Relations staff now surface the right researcher while still in the room with a partner—no email chains required.
Bridging the language divide. Industry‑friendly tags replace jargon, preventing those “lost‑in‑translation” moments that stall collaborations.
Less duplicate entry. Faculty members provide raw materials to indicate expertise: syllabi, notes, presentations, and PDFs. There's no need to manually or painstakingly extract relevant information from these documents.
Campus‑wide visibility. The report calls Scholarly a “core infrastructure piece” and recommends it as a model for other Emerging Research Institutions.
What’s Next
Phase Two will scale the prototype beyond the initial 30 faculty, weaving Scholarly into grant‑seeking, student projects, and regional workforce initiatives. If Valpo’s early results are any indication, the best‑fit expert will soon be just a search—or a chat—away for every stakeholder on campus.
Ready to surface your own hidden expertise?
Book a 20‑minute demo and see how Scholarly can transform scattered data into an AI‑powered talent directory—no spreadsheets required.
(Want the long‑form details? Grab the full Collaboratory report or reach out and we’ll send you the highlights.)
