Tying student results and curriculum has been a challenge for engineering schools, according to Gord Slemko with Calgary startup Libellum.

Slemko, like many of the city’s startup entrepreneurs, comes from Calgary’s energy industry, where he was a casualty of layoffs back in 2015. While he managed to find a job several months after being first let go, a friend of his decided to go the tech/founder route and veered away from Calgary’s volatile energy industry.

His friend approached him about helping with his then-venture, but Slemko decided to stick it out for a couple of years with his new employers.  After a couple of years, his friend finally asked him if his was in or out.

That landed Slemko with Libellum, a software platform that helps universities and colleges streamline the accreditation process.

“It’s a cloud-based platform that really just brings together all the data that’s required for accreditation,” he said.

Slemko said that around 10 years ago, the engineering accreditation board for post-secondary schools shifted from solely curriculum-based to a blend of curricula and outcomes. For years, Slemko said schools had little trouble showing their curriculum matched what accreditation boards were looking for.

“It’s that other piece that has derailed a lot of the schools’ abilities to maintain their accreditation, he said.

“What happens is, you have them with their curriculum over on the one side, which is fine, they’ve been doing that forever, but now they have to start tying the student results.”

That meant they had to tie curriculum to things as simple as test results. Finding a system that could do that quickly and efficiently was a must, Slemko said.

“It’s a lot like the schools are doing their taxes, but it’s a four-year cycle, and it’s 100 per cent guarantee that they’re going to get audited,” Slemko said.

“Our software platform essentially provides that structure, it provides the means to gather the data.”

Canada – and engineering – are the beachhead

Slemko said they were in a very enviable position to start: Schools came to them with the problem, looking for the development of a system.  That led them to focus on Canadian engineering schools to start.

“Establish that foothold, build up the company and then we’ll be looking for into like the US on the engineering side of it,” he said.

Right now, Slemko said they’re in the scaling phase. Being in the Alberta Catalyzer – Velocity program has put them in touch with a lot of different resources to forge ahead.  He comes from a technical background, with a bit of business development, but he hadn’t helped run a business before.

“That’s where the Velocity program is great because it exposes us to all these things,” he said.

“Everything we’re learning in the Velocity program and the connections we’re making and all the resources that are we’re being exposed to and everything has really come in handy.

“It just basically helps a company like ours… try and get the wheels up off the ground.”

There’s a vast number of engineering disciplines this can apply to, Slemko said. Each school that provides education in those areas can benefit from a platform like Libellum’s.

From there, Slemko said they can apply the same system to other fields: Medicine, nursing, education, business and more. That’s down the road.

“It’s just Canada’s the beachhead; we’re establishing the foothold there will be looking into the US,” he said.