Building Toward Student Success: Jewett Hall
A One-Stop Student Success Center in Jewett Hall
Provided by Brightspot
“Jewett Hall would be transformed into a dynamic, 24-hour space, with high visibility and improved student services offerings for the entire campus to enjoy.” –SUNY Fredonia Facilities Master Plan, May 9, 2011
Fredonia’s 2011 Facilities Master Plan calls for either the renovation Jewett Hall or demolition and replacement of the building to house student support services. The plan states that “the facility would complement the Williams Center as a very active, public building with improved adjacent plaza spaces, providing student services functions that the Williams Center is currently unable to accommodate.” This Building for Student Success project will realize this vision of Jewett Hall with a renovation rather than replacement. Through a complete renovation, Jewett Hall will become a one-stop Student Success Center. Its goals would be to provide superior customer service to students, deliver integrated services, demonstrate ownership of student retention issues, and provide a platform for relationship building with students.
What is a “One Stop” Model? Essentially, “one stop” is a student services model that relies heavily on highly developed and intuitive online portals, transaction-enabling self-service, cross-trained staff, and thorough integration of “traditional” services. This model is student-centered and technologically rich, and from a student’s perspective, simple. It aims, in all, to empower students to get what they need, when they need it, from anywhere, at 2 p.m. or 2 a.m. It aims also to liberate institutions from archaic, inefficient, often redundant models suited for a bygone era.
The one-stop Student Success Center will be student, not service, centered. Fredonia’s Student Success Center will adopt a one-stop philosophy, emphasizing students’ needs over institutional functions, and focuses on improving the overall student experience.
Like the Academic Commons in Reed Library, the Student Success Center in Jewett Hall will use technology to extend and enhance student support. Online portals, the heart of one stop, will be loaded with dynamic forms, easy to use registration and financial aid platforms, creative means of communicating policies and reminders (texting, e.g., is a growing practice), searchable indexes, and intuitive FAQs. Portals and self-service capabilities will be designed to be crisp, clear, and intuitive. They will be accessible any time of day, on any device. Rather than pick up the phone, students instinctively will go first to the online portal, and reach out to a live person only if necessary.
Fredonia’s staff will be cross-trained and ready to help students. Fredonia’s Student Success Center will function as a central operational unit, usually conveniently and centrally located on campus, and consisting of cross trained staff prepared to handle student questions, issues, and complaints that cannot be completed online. Staff members utilize a combination of email, phone, chat, and social networking platforms to interact with students virtually, often in real time. In person, should more complex or urgent needs arise, staff are accessible, friendly, and empowered to help students who walk in to the Student Success Center.
One Stop is a promising model particularly well-suited to institutions that need to support a diverse and changing student demographics (e.g. first generation, adult learners, digital natives tethered to their smart phones), overcoming operational inefficiencies, and entering the 21st century with a streamlined, adaptable, cost-saving model. It takes time, energy, leadership and hard work to implement a one stop model, but it is well worth the investment yielding more satisfied students, more efficiently run institutions, and higher employee morale.