The brand-new "AU Central" office is as hassle-free as Wal-Mart for one-stop-shopping, or at least that's what American University officials hope students think about their solution to the overlap of several other campus services.
This past summer, the university combined the offices of the Registrar, Student Accounts, and Financial aid into one place called AU Central. Officials hope that as a result, students' concerns can be more easily solved and satisfaction of university services is improved.
“The days of students self diagnosing their problem and searching for answers in a variety of offices is over,” said director of operations Jonnel Clothier in an interview with The Eagle. “The students aren’t here to do their business processes, they’re here to get an education."
The AU Central office serves as the front door to the three offices of the Registrar, Student Accounts and Financial Aid. When students come into the office, they interact with one counselor. Every student who calls, e-mails, or walks into the office will have an electronic ticket opened by one of the eight counselors and the ticket will not be closed until the problem is resolved.
Though AU Central has now begun to finesse its services, it was not working as smoothly when it first opened. According to Clothier, the office's eight counseling staff members were hit with almost 1,000 phone calls the second day it was open. Some students reported being on hold for over an hour this past summer. Since AU Central opened on July 1, students' reactions to their interaction with the office have been mixed.
Sophomore Danna Hailfinger, a political science major, said she had to go to AU central midway through the semester. She needed to fill out a proof of enrollment form in order to receive scholarship money. Hailfinger said that AU Central employees were nice and made the process easy.
"I just walked right in, told them my problem, was given the form, signed it and was done," she said. "Last year when I had to do this, I first went to Financial Aid, did something there, and then I had to go over to the Registrar's office. It was a lot of annoying running around."
Yet despite a shiny new waiting room with comfy chairs and up-to-date technology to streamline student processes, some students say the place is impersonal and more trouble than it's worth.
Senior Amanda Merkwae, a Law and Society major, said she had been dealing with the Financial Aid office ever since arriving at AU. Whenever she had a question about her loans or grants, she contacted the same person who usually dealt with her file. That way, she didn't have to start from scratch every time.
Merkwae said that when the switch to AU Central was made, she had a hard time explaining her concerns to employees who "had clearly not been dealing with this kind of stuff for very long."
"I understand the office's need to train new staff members, but this lack of experience caused me to pay multiple visits to the office when they could not adequately answer the questions or file the documents that the old Financial Aid Office was able to," she said.
The senior's roommate Jesse Schwab, a junior, experienced problems when communicating via email to AU Central officials over the summer.
"The employee who was responding to me was really unprofessional, spelled tons of things wrong and generally just sounded like he didn't care too much about my concern," Schwab said. "Maybe he was busy or maybe he didn't know what he was doing, but either way I don't think an office responsible to do and know so much can afford to mess up like that."
Clothier said she and her staff have been working diligently to fix those concerns. Three new staff counselors started working in the office in early September, and work study positions have helped aid the staffing shortage as well. There is also a list of frequently asked questions on the AU Central website that Clothier recommends students check out before sending a request to the office. She has also said that since the office opened in July, approximately 72 percent of callers and visitors reported a positive experience through a random survey.
“Right now, we may not be as fast as we would like to be, but we believe a complete answer that may take a little longer to provide is what students prefer,” Clothier said in the Eagle interview.
The officials behind AU Central also hope that using technology will further streamline student transactions.
“Whether it’s paying their bill, applying for whatever, or dealing with an issue that comes up in their financial aid package, we’d like to have as many processes as possible automated so the students can just take care of it at 2:00 in the morning if they want,” said interim director Elizabeth Douglass in a June interview with American Today.
According to Student Government President Nate Bronstein, AU Central had been in the making for a couple years, and officials relied on his and other students' feedback to craft the idea in its early stages.
"Over the summer I put together a team of about 20 people to test the system, and we all thought of fake issues or problems we had and entered the office to test the advocates on everything from a blocked account, to financial aide to issues with registration to studying abroad," he said. "I would say there was about an 85 percent success rate - and for the first time, this wasn't bad at all."
Bronstein said most "failures" were in issues pertaining to scholarships and financial aid, but that AU Central incorporated the feedback into their system.
American University isn't the first college in the district to combine offices into a one-stop-shop, and Bronstein said that precedence encouraged AU to follow others' footsteps.
At George Washington University, the "Colonial Center" brings together in a "friendly, centralized, service-culture setting the offices of Student Financial Assistance, Student Accounts, the Registrar, GWorld, and the Cashier," according to its website. The Center is located in GWU's equivalent of Mary Graydon Center where most students congregate, and also has a fully-fledged online portal.
Yet at nearby Georgetown University, the offices of financial aid and student accounts are still in two separate buildings on opposite sides of campus. Suzanne Fonzi, a sophomore at Georgetown, says she had never really considered combining those services into one place but that it might be a good idea.
"Even though it's clear in theory to which place you'd bring a certain question, you end up getting shuffled around pretty often," she said. "But I don't always have time to search around the website and figure out what x problem means and where I should go, so if the most popular services were in one place it seems like it would be helpful."
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