STARSCollege Network

Problem

STARS College Network had a mission before it had a website. Founded through donor support to connect rural and small-town students with top universities, the organization needed a digital presence built from the ground up — no existing CMS, no content library, no prior structure to inherit. The challenge wasn't modernization; it was making something out of nothing, for an audience that is often underserved by the polished, prestige-forward language of higher education. The site needed to feel approachable and trustworthy to students and families from communities where applying to a top university can feel like a distant possibility.

Decision

The same JAMstack architecture from my UChicago work — Gatsby, React, Contentful, and Netlify — proved equally well-suited here, though the implementation required a different kind of thinking. Building on a blank slate meant designing the entire content model from scratch, which started with an honest assessment of the editorial team's skills and how they'd need to use the CMS day-to-day. Contentful was configured around their actual workflow, not an idealized one. The site also needed to serve two distinct audiences — prospective students and families, and high school advisors guiding rural students toward college — which shaped both the information architecture and the tone of the content.

Outcome

The STARS site now serves as the connective tissue for a network of 32 top U.S. universities actively recruiting rural and small-town students. Since launch, applicant numbers from those communities have increased measurably across participating institutions — which is, ultimately, what the site exists to do. The platform has also expanded to include a dedicated space for high school advisors, broadening its reach further upstream into the college preparation process.