We asked Prograds founder, Fred Cutler, about building an app that enables grad students, faculty, and program administrators to update information about each student's status and progress. Fred refers to Prograds as the first and only web application for graduate student progress. Fred is a political science professor and he chose Bubble because the no-code platform enabled him to build a fully-functional web app without writing a single line of code.
Tell us about your app and what it does.
Prograds is the first and only web application for graduate student progress. Grad students, faculty, and program administrators update information about each student’s status and progress. All the information about a student’s milestones and requirements, funding, courses, thesis work, and other events is all in one place. Users can share files, send messages, and set email reminders to keep students on track.
How does your app work?
Students have a progress page that shows their stage, milestones to be completed, requirements to be met, funding, employment, events, courses, and what they're currently working on. Students, their supervisors, and the program staff add information to the student records. Faculty have a dashboard of all the students they supervise or are committee members for. Admins have rollup dashboards of all students, all faculty, and all funding.
Tell us a little about your background and how you discovered no-code tools like Bubble.
I'm a political science professor. I have a startup called WeVu (with code!) and discovered bubble to build a marketplace app around it. From there it was natural to use Bubble to build Prograds.
Why did you build your app on Bubble?
I don't have much coding skills, so Bubble enabled me and a friend to build Prograds successfully. It's amazing.
What have been your milestones or successes so far?
Every professor I talk to thinks that this is a problem that needs a solution. We're beta testing Prograds in some departments at my university, UBC (Vancouver) this fall. I'm working now on signing up departments in other schools. This kind of system is all-or-nothing for departments, so the department head and director of graduate programs have to have an early-adopter mentality.
What are your next steps or future plans for your app?
Conquer the market. All graduate programs, everywhere. Eventually, translate into a few other languages.
Learn more about Prograds: Twitter | Facebook
About Bubble
Bubble is a leader in the no-code movement. Bubble offers a powerful point-and-click web editor and cloud hosting platform that allows users to build fully customizable web applications and workflows, ranging from simple prototypes to complex marketplaces, SaaS products, and more. Over 500,000 users are currently building and launching businesses on Bubble - many have gone on to participate in top accelerator programs, such as Y Combinator, and even raise $365M in venture funding. Bubble is more than just a product. We are a strong community of builders and entrepreneurs that are united by the belief that everyone should be able to create technology.
Do you want your app featured by Bubble? Reach out to us and tell us about your app. In addition to this series, we sometimes select our best apps to showcase on our website.
