Student Services
What type of student services does your campus provide? I was at a ground campus and recently transferred to online. Our ground campus gave out information on food stamps, shelters, daycare, bus routes, etc. Do other campuses do this to let the student know their school can become their second family and a support for them?
Our school provides students with assistance with resume writing and assistance reviewing certain skills as they progress through there degree obtainment.
All of the schools I have worked for provided student services whether it was an online or brick and mortar campus. The services they mostly offered to all students were free tutoring, career counseling and success coaching.Each institution would assist the student in any way possible and find any information needed as long as it was compliant.
My school is extremely student oriented. A lot of times our students don't have the support they need at home to help motivate them to complete school. We are that extra support for them. On site we have an advisor that assists them with anything from an assignment and laying out their work for them to helping them deal with personal issues. We also have a career services that works directly with each individual student throughout their whole career here. They do mock interviews, help them build resumes, and as an assignment they help students apply to 20-25 different jobs towards the end of their schooling. Aside from those, we have a lot of literature to assist students in overcoming any other obsticles that they may have such as transportation, child care, health insurance etc.
These basic survival areas are good for schools to have information on. My previous institution had this with our Dean of Students. There was however a team of leadership individuals who concerned themselves with "retention" or other areas where they could help students with problems in the areas you mentioned. They found that by putting their heads together they were able to increase their ability to help them.
My previous school hired a career services person to deal with student issues other than academics. Many students were pleased with the assistance provided and it definitely helped with retention.
We do the best we can to help assist our students with any outside issues that may arise. (Food, shelter, transportation) In our Student Services department we have someone who helps assist the students with this. They have a resource binder that they can refer to. This resource binder keeps growing, as I'm sure you can imagine. We also get support from out deans, who help guide them to resource that they may know of. We also have a service that is provided to our students 24/7. This service offers counselors to guide our students with any issues they are having.
