Does Your ASC Need Technology Help?

Digital Debut

Does Your ASC Need Technology Help?

CSU Fresno’s IT students, who created a dashboard for ASCA, might be your answer

BY SAHELY MUKERJI | APRIL 25, 2025

ASCA’s ASC Administrator Development Program will have a new, user-friendly platform. This platform will accept applications, automatically pair mentors and mentees, send emails to introduce them, generate and distribute participation records, and issue certificates upon program completion.

The students of the Department of Information Systems and Decision Sciences at The Craig School of Business, California State University (CSU) in Fresno, California, are creating this new platform. The platform is part of a class project for students enrolled in the IS187 Practicum course, says Professor Jorge Cruz, who teaches the course. Depending on class size, three to four students are assigned to each available project, he says.

“Presently, I am keeping up with all tasks of the ASC Administrator Development Program via a spreadsheet,” says Gina Throneberry, ASCA’s director of Education & Clinical Affairs. “I communicate with the mentors and mentees via email to keep them on track and provide mentors with a participation record that they must check off showing mentee participation and email back to me. This is a very cumbersome process. We run two administrator development classes simultaneously, so I manage communication and tracking for hundreds of people.” This new platform will automate all tasks and significantly streamline the program’s operations, she says.

Sarah Sterling, CASC, ASCA Education and Programs Committee member and director of area operations for Sutter Health’s Surgery Center Division in Greater San Francisco and Greater Silicon Valley, California, connected Throneberry and Cruz last fall. Sterling had previously collaborated with Cruz and his students on a staffing app for her ASCs last year, she says. “They provided me with the prototype of the app in Adobe XD and a folder containing all prototype assets, such as navigation, manual and diagram. This allowed me to test the prototype with end-users for feedback,” Sterling says. “It was very impressive and exceeded my expectations.”

Throneberry and Cruz started working with the CSU student team in January, Throneberry says. “Jason [Hawkins, ASCA’s director of IT] and I meet with three students/developers and a project manager regularly. These students are graded on this project. We have conference calls twice a week, and we have been rolling on.”

Hawkins was impressed with the students' work from the get-go, he says. “Their work was immensely helpful in establishing a clear UI and UX [User Interface/User Experience] framework—one that balances aesthetics, accessibility and functionality. It has given us a solid foundation we can now hand off to developers to bring to life.”

The IS187 Practicum course aims to connect students with businesses and provide internship-like experiences at no cost to the businesses, Cruz says. This course helps students gain professional experience. Students also gain opportunities toward a possible paid internship that can eventually help them pay off their student loans. The team is made up of local, diverse and often first-generation university students.

Cruz has been teaching this course for the past six to seven years. “I reach out to businesses, offer free website development and mobile app designs,” he says. “I teach students the concepts of UI/UX design while using various software tools to complete the initial wireframe design tasks. I also collaborate with third-party companies so they can introduce their design software tools to students at no cost to the university. This idea of introducing integration software tools from different companies at no cost to university students was inspired by Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.” Cruz has worked in the Bay Area for more than 30 years, including a stint at Apple.

The students taking the IS187 Practicum course work on different projects as a team. “We follow an Agile and Scrum framework, where everyone in the course, regardless of their project, can contribute to multiple, working projects,” Cruz says. “My course becomes one company with various departments under the CSU Fresno flag, all working toward one goal: the overall completion of each project.” The professor maintains weekly open forums. “If one team encounters a problem, the entire class is encouraged to offer corrective suggestions,” he says. “By fostering camaraderie among classmates, I help create a supportive network that will hopefully last beyond graduation.”

The ASCA administrator platform is the largest project the class has undertaken, given its complexity in design, multilevel information architecture and the data analytics required, Cruz says. “Due to the scope of the project and the fact that it is for an out-of-state company, the final product will be presented to the Department Chair Yertai Tenai and then to the dean,” Cruz says. All previous projects were initiated by local businesses, he adds. For the ASCA project, he requested the services of volunteer Project Manager Isela Cardenas.

“I am truly grateful for the opportunity to lead this project as the product manager, working alongside an incredible team to create a design-ready prototype for ASCA,” says Sunny Devendranadh, the student who led the project. “With the trust and support of Gina, Jason and our professor Cruz, we were able to lay a strong foundation and build a solution that addresses the pain points of mentees and mentors. The result is a product that not only looks great but also delivers a meaningful user experience.” The other students who worked on the ASCA project were Project Coordinator Jordan Garcia and UI/UX Designer Phu Nguyen.

“The project cost us time only,” Throneberry says. “If you have an IT project in mind, Fresno State could be a good source because the students are efficient, professional and highly motivated. Assigning them your IT project could be a way to help them find jobs after they graduate.”

If your ASC is interested in teaming up with the students from CSU Fresno to assist with a technology project, please write Professor Jorge Cruz at jorge_cruz@mail.fresnostate.edu.