Program Helps Colleges Keep Eye on At-Risk Students

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When a small-shop Internet consulting company recently forayed into the software business, it didn’t have to worry about marketing its new product. The first client was already in the bag: USC.

Los Angeles-based Urban Insight just rolled out a Web-based computer software system that tracks the retention rate of 16,000 undergraduates at the downtown campus.

Called UAdvise, it allows student advising to go online. Instead of using a paper and pencil to take notes during meetings with students, advisers input all the information into a Web interface. This information, cross-referenced with the university’s online database systems, allows advisers to zero in on at-risk students.

For example, an adviser with 300 students may search for all second-year history majors who could lose financial aid next year and got at least one C last semester.

“The system may bring up five students. So now, as an adviser, you have a handful of students to focus on, instead of 300,” said Chris Stein, chief executive of Urban Insight.

The company has been the university’s Internet consultant for a decade, building Web sites for various departments and managing its online databases. In 2006, university officials approached Urban Insight to come up with a creative way to more precisely monitor at-risk students so advisers can reach out to them before they drop out.

After building the software together, USC released its proprietary rights so that Urban Insight can sell it to other universities. The software runs on a Microsoft application.

“Given that USC spent 18 months and a lot of money developing this software, I’m hopeful that other universities will leverage that effort for their campuses through Urban Insight,” Stein said.

The company has 13 employees. Its clients include the city of Los Angeles, Southern California Association of Governments and Louisiana Recovery Authority.


Changing Channels

TV screens are no longer limited to a living room. They’re everywhere retail stores, grocery stores, gas pumps and office elevators.

This video market, called “out-of-home,” is proving to be extremely lucrative. Ad spending on out-of-home video networks reached $1.3 billion in 2007, according to PQ Media.

About 20,000 of these screens across the country are showing programs by West L.A.-based Channel M. The company recently received a $6 million injection of cash from Vintage Capital Group and Ascent Venture Group. This brings the company’s total venture funding to $15 million.

Channel M puts content on TV screens at major chain retailers, including the Disney Store, Nordstrom, Macy’s, Blockbuster and Game Stop. The company streams music videos, video games and movie trailers from a library of licensed content, along with original material. At the Sundance Film Festival, Channel M interviewed Robert De Niro and showed the clip along with scenes from “Meet the Parents” on screens at Blockbuster.

“Content is a huge differentiator for us,” said David Teichner, the company’s chief executive. “Unlike most other companies that show sourced content from CNN or a weather channel, we customize TV shows for each retailer.”

Channel M employs 55, with about half in West LA. The company was founded in 1989 in Chicago and began producing content for TV screens at mall-based arcades. It moved here in 2000.


Baby Booming

Two of the most intensely emotional periods in a woman’s life include planning for a wedding, and pregnancy.

The folks at the Knot knew this and bought WeddingChannel.com, where brides can get information on everything from wedding dresses to caterers, create their own Web site and get expert advice.

Hilary Zalon has fashioned something very similar for moms-to-be, called the Cradle.

“Nine months is a long time,” said Zalon, chief executive of the Cradle. I wanted to create a site where women are not just visiting and leaving to another site looking for information. I really wanted to create a home base for them.”

Why now?

“There’s a baby boom going on,” she said. In 2006, there were 4.3 million births, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The last time the country has seen that many newborns was in 1951.

TheCradle.com bills itself as a one-stop lifestyle destination for expectant and new moms, and features hundreds of articles from obstetricians, pediatricians and contributing writers about pregnancy and birth. It also includes a social networking element and an option to create a personal Web site where baby registries can be maintained. A baby name search function, features 50,000 suggestions.

Each day the Web site greets the expectant mom with a message based upon the baby’s time in utero. For example, one note read: “Your baby’s fingernails are forming today.”

Revenues will come from advertising against a captive audience eager to spend. It is financed by private investors and Zalon said the seed funds should sustain the seven-member company for at least a year.

Since the site launched in December, about 200,000 people have visited and 10,000 have signed up as members.


Staff reporter Booyeon Lee can be reached at (323) 549-5225, ext. 230, or at [email protected].

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