City University of New York

Company Background

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The City University of New York (CUNY) Service Corps is a citywide initiative that connects CUNY students, faculty, and staff with service projects that strengthen communities across New York City. Focused on civic, economic, and environmental sustainability, the program enables students to contribute meaningfully to the city while gaining real-world experience, earning income, and, in some cases, receiving academic credit.

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The Challenge

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Each year, CUNY Service Corps matches hundreds of students to roles with hundreds of community partner organizations based on each student’s preferences. In the early years of the program, this process was entirely manual—requiring staff to spend weeks manually assigning matches. The system was not only time-consuming and error-prone but also unsustainable as the program expanded across campuses.

CUNY needed to transition to a scalable, automated solution that could produce accurate student-employer matches based on multiple factors—such as location, role type, and working hours—while remaining transparent, maintainable, and aligned with the real-world dynamics of the program.

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The Solution

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Stride partnered with CUNY to design and build a custom matching platform tailored to the needs of the Service Corps. At the heart of the solution was a stable, domain-aware algorithm capable of evaluating multiple criteria to make high-quality, data-driven matches between students and employers.

The system was built using domain-driven design principles to ensure the architecture could grow with the program and remain supportable by CUNY staff. It was engineered not only to meet immediate placement needs, but to serve as a sustainable foundation as the program scales to additional campuses and partners.

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The Outcomes

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The new platform dramatically reduced the time and manual effort required to match students with opportunities—turning what had previously taken over two weeks into a process that could be completed in minutes for mutual matches, and just a few days for the rest.

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“In the past we spent over two weeks doing the matching. But with the software, the mutual matches were done in a matter of minutes and the unmatched students were matched in about 3 days,” said Rachel Stephenson, University Director, CUNY Service Corps. “This allowed us to focus our time and energy on other programmatic aspects of the Service Corps.”

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By automating the placement process and increasing match accuracy, the system exceeded student satisfaction targets and enabled program staff to redirect their efforts toward high-impact strategic initiatives—ultimately making the Service Corps more efficient, scalable, and impactful for both students and the communities they serve.

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