The challenge
CCCS is Colorado's largest system of higher education, with a highly multilingual student body across its colleges. Equitable access meant one language standard everywhere — the same quality and responsiveness for classroom needs, advising, and student services all year, and flawless coverage for large ceremonies with thousands of families at once.
The system also wanted a clear read on how its language program was actually being used — which services, which languages, where the gaps were — rather than working from anecdote.
The solution
Day to day, DCLS provided translation, interpretation, and transcription across the system in more than 250 languages — Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, French, Amharic, Vietnamese, American Sign Language, and more — on demand by phone and video, plus in-person interpreters for students, faculty, and staff.
Commencement and graduation were run as one engagement. DCLS handled the audio and IT setup that carried interpretation to everyone in a large venue, provided live technical support during the event, and managed the planning, participant coordination, and on-site execution.
Alongside delivery, DCLS ran data and analytics work across the program by analyzing usage to surface the most-used services, languages, and channels, running surveys after major events, and identifying improvement areas — delivered as reports that informed where the system should focus next.
The results
- More than 43,000 students, plus faculty and staff, supported across the system in 250+ languages including ASL.
- A multi-year, continuing collaboration.
- Commencement and graduation delivered as fully managed engagements — interpretation, event AV/IT, and technical support from one team.
- Program-wide data and analytics — usage patterns, most-used services, improvement areas — turned into reports that guided where to focus next.
