Campus Notes Ep7: Seen and Cared For

Mackenzie Sullivan, assistant director of admissions at the University of Akron, describes belonging simply: families tell her the university just felt right. Sometimes that moment comes stepping out of the car, sometimes at a specific point in an event, sometimes later at home when a student talks it through with family.

Her team's job is to make that moment more likely by connecting students with the people who will support them through college, long before classes begin.

Belonging Starts With Knowing Who to Talk To

Admissions does its part to make students feel welcome, Sullivan says, but once students enroll they need to be connected to the people who will support them throughout college. So every event is built to introduce them to:

• Faculty, including the professor they may have in their first or second semester
• Other students in their major
• Student organizations
• Support services

Students respond to the chance to talk with faculty directly, and her team keeps that connection in every phase of every event.

Two Events, Two Different Jobs

Zips Visit Day is Akron's open house and a student's first look at the university. It runs six times a year, on Fridays and Saturdays:

• One in April as the spring kickoff
• Two over the summer
• Three in the fall

The day covers admissions information, a campus tour, and an academic and student services fair with every major represented, student services, and a handful of student organizations.

Future Zips Day is for admitted students, who may have a major in mind, a few ideas, or none yet. They spend about an hour and fifteen minutes in an academic area session, or with the student success center if they want to explore. Sullivan asks faculty to give the facility tour but also to do something that engages students. In one biology session, small groups of students and parents race to rebuild a skeleton and work out which bone is missing. Students tend to win, and in the group she joined, one student spotted the missing bone within minutes.

Future Zips Day also leans into belonging. Students attend a reception with games, where Sullivan has watched them swap Snapchats and phone numbers, while parents attend a separate session. Families can also meet with orientation, housing, dining, and financial aid.

When the App Does the Logistics

Guidebook has changed how facility tours work at Zips Visit Day. Academic areas used to send registration lists and email students where to meet. Now each tour and its time are listed in the app, so students find tours on their own and build them into their schedules. Faculty still promote them, and more departments now offer them.

The app also helps when plans break. At a recent event, the projector and microphones weren't working in the planned room, and moving to another space was easier than troubleshooting. In the past that would have meant a room number printed on a paper agenda, telling families at check-in, and staff stationed outside the original room. This time the team logged in, changed the room number, and moved the sign. Staff still had to be told about the change, but it looked cleaner on their end.

A Handoff That Doesn't Leave Students Waiting

Admissions stays involved through confirmation and enrollment, but once students start hearing from the orientation team they shift gears. The timeline Sullivan describes:

• January 15: housing applications open
• Around Valentine's Day: the orientation team emails save-the-dates for orientation and class registration to early confirmers
• Students who confirm later get the same information within a week of confirming

Having those offices at events also lets students ask questions in person, including how to reschedule an orientation date that conflicts with a family vacation. Orientation then keeps programming going through roughly the first month of school, the weeks of welcome, with activities like first-day-of-school pictures and movie nights.

Retention Starts With Fewer Barriers

Sullivan's view of retention is straightforward: students who aren't running into barriers are more likely to stay and persist. Students feel they don't belong when they don't know where to go or who to ask for help, and higher education can feel siloed, with students shuttled from office to office. Her goal is for the first office a student asks to point them to the right one.

Showing students that there is always something to do and someone to see helps them learn where to turn if they haven't found their group yet, including the office dedicated to student organizations.

The Real Measure: Seen, Heard, and Cared For

What Sullivan most wants a first-year student to remember about Future Zips Day is that they were cared for. Akron is a mid-sized university of just over 15,000 students, so it can feel like a small fish in a big pond, and the team works to make each student feel important.

Her example: after a recent visit day, one piece of feedback was about a student who mentioned twirling in their high school marching band. An admissions officer who had also twirled in high school was connected with the student and shared opportunities on campus to keep it going. Little touches like that, she says, make a student feel acknowledged in a crowd of seven, eight, or nine hundred people, and they are what leave students feeling seen, heard, and cared for.