Pittsburg State University, Kansas, USA

Customer Spotlight

Pittsburg State University (PSU) originally opened its doors to just 54 students as the Kansas State Manual Training Normal School Auxiliary back in 1903. The school has developed dramatically over the last century with the addition of their state of the art facilities, their incredible dedication to the arts, and not forgetting their rise to the top of Division 2 Football as the Pittsburg State University Gorillas!

“One of the most important things to us at PSU is the students. We want their experience to be positive and transformational. We want them to leave here successful and remember this place fondly.”

PSU's AppsAnywhere Journey

A New Technology

A great deal of undergraduate students at PSU come for the traditional university experience, so online teaching wasn't particularly on their radar before the pandemic. However, PSU has a strong graduate program including a specifically online MBA course which attracts students from all over the world. They understood that they needed to duplicate their efforts with online courses to campus-based ones without losing the integrity of instruction. To do this, PSU's Office of Information Technology Services (ITS) looked for a way to deliver virtual desktops to students regardless of location, long before the pandemic.

The problem they faced was that they kept finding solutions that were very expensive and required a lot of upkeep. In their research, they came across AppsAnywhere and discovered that the nearby Missouri University of Science and Technology (MST) was successfully using it with successful results.

Financial Benefits

After seeing the success at MST, PSU began talks with AppsAnywhere regarding their digital strategy. They had already made great strides within this area by creating a digital toolkit. This phrase refers to a combination of multiple pieces of software which work together to create the overall solution. By implementing AppsAnywhere, they were able to reduce more expensive aspects of their digital toolkit resulting in financial savings, as well as a more robust system.

It’s not just the university that has saved money either, students are benefitting too, which is something PSU was keen to achieve.

“We have several courses that require very specific and expensive software such as SPSS. Now there's no reason for those students to have to go buy that when we can deliver it through AppsAnywhere.”  

“It was very clear from the beginning that AppsAnywhere wanted our students to be successful, that we were partners. I've always felt like we're partners. So now this is just the way we do business.”

Looking Ahead

Here at AppsAnywhere, we see partners, not customers and we are so thrilled that the same can be said for PSU.

A lot has changed for this university over its 119 years, and we are proud to be playing a part. We look forward to the future and to seeing advancements made at this innovative university.

AppsAnywhere x Pittsburg State University