Faculty see their own sections, program directors their degree's courses, building managers their rooms, and deans the cost and loads. From there anyone can try a move, propose it, discuss it and approve it, with clashes caught as they go and every decision kept on the record.
And the process is yours to run:
In use at Columbia College Chicago's School of Audio and Music.
Each term's draft goes to the faculty and staff who know it best. They flag clashes, propose changes and approve it section by section, and administrators see the cost and teaching loads before it's final.
The scheduler's spreadsheet, as it is. Nothing is retyped.
Faculty and staff filter to their sections, comment and tag colleagues.
Anyone can propose a change. Editors accept or reject it.
Decisions go to the scheduler as one message. Their file is never edited.
Every section, and every proposed change, is checked against the rest of the draft.
Each new version is compared section by section, and comments and approvals carry over.
Part-time pay from your faculty agreement's rates, and full-time loads across the year, counted from the draft itself.
Comment on any section and @-mention a colleague to bring them in.
Last year's enrollment and this year's feeder courses, beside the seats offered.
Required courses with no section are listed, and anyone can flag one.
Move a class on the week and see the checks before proposing it.
Download any version as the room grid your scheduler already uses.
Proposals, issues and comments written up as one message, sent by email or Teams from your own account.
Every change records who, when, and what it was before and after. The log can't be edited.
Maps of each degree's prerequisites sit alongside, so a timetable can be read against them.
Only people with your college's email addresses can sign in, and only the people you choose see the internal side.
Your college's copy has its own site and its own database, never shared with another college. Where it runs is agreed with your IT office.
For chairs, program directors, schedulers and deans who want a better review of the schedule but can't justify an enterprise purchase.
The service is the setup and the teaching. Once both are done, Atlas Academic is your college's to run, and your own people can shape it.
We set up your college's own copy. We connect it to your course catalog, enter your degrees, and configure it to your scheduler's own spreadsheet, your rooms and buildings, and your pay and load rules.
It works with the course search many colleges already have, starting with Ellucian Colleague Self-Service; other systems are a conversation. Where it runs is agreed with your IT office, and we train the people who will look after it.
We teach a named person or two at your college to manage it, and to develop it further with AI coding agents, using the rulebook and checks it comes with.
The point is that your college is not dependent on us.
Your people run each term's review and change what your college needs changed.
If you want us nearby, an optional retainer keeps your copy up to date and gets you a hand when something needs one.
Your college's copy is configured, not rewritten. That is what lets someone on your staff who isn't a software specialist extend it with an AI coding agent without putting the schedule at risk.
What is your college's own lives in one place: its names and terms, the scheduler's spreadsheet columns and wording, rooms and buildings, pay and load rules. Your college's data loads as its own seed.
The project carries the rules an AI coding agent reads before it changes anything: the ones that keep the review trustworthy, such as never guessing at data it cannot read, and auditing every change.
Automated checks fail the build when a rule is broken, and tests cover the rest. The agent follows the rules, and the checks catch it when it doesn't.
Atlas Academic is built for the questions your IT and security offices will ask. The short version: AI helps develop the software, never reads your schedule, and the rest is the kind of control a review of people's work needs.
The project's files, on a developer's computer
Your college's own database, behind sign-in
The agent changes code and configuration. Your drafts, comments and instructor details stay in your college's database, which it never needs access to. Tests run on made-up data, and your college's own data is kept apart from them.
Nothing your staff enter in Atlas Academic is sent to an AI service. The running product doesn't call one, and your IT office can read the code to confirm it.
The rulebook is a plain text file, not tied to any vendor. Use the coding agent your IT office already approves, under the agreement your college already has, or an open-source model on your own machines. Or skip AI altogether: it's ordinary code a developer can maintain by hand.
Sections, rooms, instructors, comments and approvals. It isn't designed to hold student records: enrollment figures are seat totals from your public course search, with no names. Instructor availability, status and pay estimates are shown only to administrators and schedule editors.
Every page sits behind sign-in with your college's email address, and the review is open only to a group your administrators manage. A sign-in to the review lasts a day, and the review signs itself out after 30 minutes untouched. A password and authenticator app are available for a computer of one's own.
Who changed what, when, and the record before and after, in a log that cannot be edited and can be exported. Nothing on the page deletes a draft for good, and the scheduler's own file is never edited.
Changes are reviewed before they go in, automated checks have to pass, and nothing reaches the live site until someone at your college publishes it. Every change is kept in the project's history.
Messages to the scheduler are written on the page and sent from the reader's own email or Teams. Course data is read from your public course search as a guest, with nothing about any person requested.
Your college runs its own copy, separate from every other college's. Where it runs is agreed with your IT office.
A university that does not exist, with a School of Media Arts, two programs and five made-up faculty, set up the way your college's copy would be. Sign in with any email address and everything is open to you but the administration pages: the maps, the Playground, the proposals and the schedule review.
Atlas Academic is a makethings.studio project, running the School of Audio and Music's schedule at Columbia College Chicago today. Tell us how your college schedules now and who would look after it, and we'll walk you through a live draft and put together a quote for the setup and teaching.
or write to hi@makethings.studio