Westmont Magazine Westmont Students Design College Software

Seven Westmont students joined forces last summer to create new software for Westmont’s advancement office. Working together, they drew on their individual skills to develop a unique extension of Salesforce that better organizes information about donors. One of the first colleges to adopt the salesforce customer relationship management (CRM) platform, Westmont asked the students to improve the accuracy of its data and speed up the process of recording gifts to the college. 

Crammed into a small room and drinking lots of coffee, the students showed up at 8 a.m. and worked through the day and the summer to complete the project. “There was good chemistry among us,” says Ryley Oroku ’20, a double major in computer science and art. “I didn’t want to stop for lunch.” In August, they presented their work at the Enabling Impact Conference on campus, which focuses on the use of Salesforce in higher education. 

“Our Westmont education has equipped us with unique perspectives to create an improved, well-rounded product,” says Dante Poleselli ’20, an economics and business and data analytics double major. 

“Hannah has a strong mathematics background to deal with numbers, Dante understands business practices well, and Kimberlee has a good sense of design,” says Sophia Gigliotti ’20, a double major in computer science and Spanish. 

“I’ve loved my experience at Westmont — the classes and the professors — and I’ve felt like they’ve really invested in me,” says Hannah Fisk ’20, who majors in mathematics and philosophy and minors in computer science. “It’s cool seeing the back end that allows donors to invest in me, and it’s great to help with that process.” 

The student programming team also included Kimberlee Gong ’21 (data analytics), Andrew Kim ’20 (data analytics), and Kevin Gao ’20 (computer science). Not only did they create a valuable tool for the college, but they gained impressive experience for their resumes. 

“Assigned projects in class usually don’t go anywhere,” Ryley says. “But we made something that helps people in their work, and we got to see the results. It’s very fulfilling.”