A modern university is a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week operation where the campus remains active long after most faculty and staff have gone home – and to bed. Just because the last classes of the day ended hours earlier doesn’t mean that many students aren’t up and about until the wee hours of the morning.
“And with 12,500 residential students living on campus,” says Steve Kremer, UConn’s assistant vice president for residential life, “a lot of things can happen during the night.”
The “Front Desk” office – a round-the-clock, full-time, trouble-shooting operation – is designed to respond to students’ needs regardless of the time of day. The office handles everything from lost keys and lockouts to faulty heaters and broken windows.
Staffed in shifts by student workers and supervisors, the operation is a call center that students can contact for non-emergency assistance or information 24 hours a day. It is located in Towers and can be reached at (860) 486-9000 or thefrontdesk@uconn.edu.
The Front Desk has become so popular that even a local hotel is calling the number.
“It is a central and single access point that students can reach out to if they have concerns,” says Kremer, adding that anyone with an emergency should call the police.
There are a total of 17 student supervisors and 62 “runners” – the people who move out in teams of two to help address problems – working different shifts throughout the day and night.
When students have locked themselves out of their dorm rooms, the Front Desk can dispatch runners to let them in (with the proper ID, of course). If someone’s door is broken or their heat won’t turn on, the office can have a maintenance worker come by and address it.
“Students are in many ways more nocturnal than they’ve ever been,” says Kremer. “Nobody turns the Internet off in the middle of the night. So it’s a really significant advance for us to tend to people’s 24-hour needs.”
During the first year of operation, the Front Desk received nearly 35,000 work orders, processing about 8,400 dorm lockouts, 1,800 heat and air conditioning calls, and handling 28 “emergency” situations.
There is also an automated work order system that students can access.
“The Front Desk monitor work orders throughout the night and there is a skilled late night maintenance crew that can be dispatched to problems.
Tracy Cree, the assistant director of residential life who oversees the Front Desk, also plans to develop a student response team this semester. After they are trained by the full time skilled staff, the student workers will provide emergency responses such as cleaning up minor floods, boarding broken windows, and generally covering a situation until appropriate staff arrive on the scene.
The system sends e-mails to students who are asking for services, and solicits feedback.
Residential Life hires a number of part-time student workers to staff the operation and added two evening and weekend supervisors this year.
A new service has been added for students who have been transported to area hospitals but find themselves in need of a way to get back to campus. The Front Desk will provide a ride back to campus for students in need both during the day and during the night.
In addition to lockouts and maintenance issues, students have also been calling for information such as bus schedules, movie start times, and other run-of-the-mill inquiries. This is just fine with Residential Life staff, who like the idea of the Front Desk becoming a simple, virtually all-purpose call center for people living on campus.
This story first ran on UConn Today in December 2009.
