University of Chicago: GradGuard Renters Insurance Brought Relief to Administration

For Greg Mulenga, Director of Occupancy Management at the University of Chicago, partnering with GradGuard has been a clear win — both for his team and for the students they serve. As Mulenga puts it, "GradGuard Renters Insurance Program was by far the easiest implementation that I have done in the 20 years that I have worked in higher education."

Before GradGuard, the team was handling incidents as they came up rather than working proactively. When something happened — a fire or a flood — staff would have to scramble to figure out whether a student had secured their own renter's insurance policy. That added a layer of stress to situations that were already stressful for everyone involved.

In evaluating their options, Mulenga and his team spoke with other institutions that had an integration with GradGuard and StarRez in place to learn from their experiences, and the feedback was uniformly positive. Since moving forward with GradGuard, the university now has a portal that lets staff see whether students have a policy in place, and submit claims on a student's behalf if the student doesn't do so themselves.

A few things set GradGuard apart. The policies are customized and geared specifically toward college students living in on-campus residence halls — an area where Mulenga felt GradGuard was really the leader. The portability of the policy was another standout feature. The results have been striking: roughly 25% of the on-campus population secured a policy within the first year of the GradGuard relationship.

For Mulenga, the impact goes beyond logistics. "When my team has gone above and beyond to try to help a student or help a family, knowing that my team has really played a role in that and made that student's experience better and hopefully allowed them to also reduce the stress that they were experiencing" is what makes the work meaningful. The word that Mulenga says comes to mind since implementing the program is relief — and ensuring students have a positive living experience is incredibly important.