[Nathan Meyer]00:00:06.000 –> 00:00:24.000 
Welcome, everyone. Good morning and thank you for joining us today and our first Guidebook meets of 2025. So for those who are joining one of our sessions for the first time, I’m Nathan, I’m the event and community manager here at Guidebook
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And I’m really excited today to be joined by Nicholas, the Director of Orientation Programs at Seattle University. And that’s what we’re going to be talking about today. We’re going to be getting into a little bit about orientation how they focus on evolving and transforming that experience
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A little bit of focus around the student experience, how technology plays a role. So Nicholas, firstly, thank you for joining us and Just to kick things off for everyone here, I’d love to dig into your role specifically at Seattle University
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How long have you been with them? And yeah, just get a little understanding of you and what’s going on?
[Nicholas Cubita]00:01:01.000 –> 00:01:12.000
Yeah, awesome. Thanks, Nathan. And thanks for having me too. So I’m the director of orientation programs here at Seattle U. I’ve been in this role just, I just hit my three-year mark a couple weeks ago.
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I also went to grad school at Seattle U. I did my master’s program here. And so technically I’m on my fifth year of being here, but third year in this role.
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And it’s been like a good homecoming being back here and so Because a little bit of the scope of what we do in orientation, we have our traditional summer fall program for incoming fall cohort.
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But one of the unique things about our campus is we’re on the quarter system, not semesters.
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And so we also do a quarterly orientation for winter quarter, spring quarter, and we have a small group that starts in the summer quarter as well.
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Outside of orientation, we host something called the Ignite First Year Leadership Program.
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And so it’s a cohort program for first year students where we’re continuing to explore what does the first year experience look like beyond traditional orientation time.
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And so that’s in our purview and we’re looking for ways to expand that too.
[Nathan Meyer]00:02:09.000 –> 00:02:13.000 
Amazing. It sounds like you definitely have a lot of events going on, a lot of keeping you busy. And yeah, we’d be glad to kind of get into some of that today.
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Yes.
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And what I will say to everyone who is joining us as well is we do really want to hear from you.
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Put your questions in the chat, ask them throughout. We’re going to have some time for Q&A at the end, but we also might take some during today’s session. So feel free to pop them in at any time. Don’t feel like you have to hold
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But I kind of want to come back to as we talked about, as I sort of said at the very top around the sort of evolution of orientation you know you’ve been with Seattle now for a couple of years. And I’m just curious, you know, how is your orientation program evolving you know what kind of key changes
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Have you delivered that have really made the biggest impact
[Nicholas Cubita]00:02:57.000 –> 00:03:14.000 
Yeah, I think the biggest one is I got here in February 2022. And so at that point we were really still slowly coming out of the pandemic And so I kind of came in this in-between where everything in 2020 went virtual.
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We actually, before the pandemic came, the institution was looking at moving virtual because a lot of programs were trending their summer program that way, thinking about how much the summer program costs for students to be required to come to campus and also just
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We were starting, you know, even before Zoom was that popular, we were starting to really get into like virtual opportunities for folks and so um I got here and we were still doing virtual in-person orientation and I had our second in-person
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Call orientation. Our first one without masks and all the COVID guidelines and so It was very much the like you know we’re very much celebrating the new normal or whatever we’re calling it where it was like the not the return to normalcy, but like the new normal of like reengaging like back with like, you know, we’re back, right? And so.
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Both for students and for their families and supporters. Figuring out what that looked like, how are we really fleshing out like a robust program virtually that was offered at different times throughout the summer.
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How are we recording things, making sure that like they’re accessible and we’re getting our captions on our videos and really kind of broadening that as much as possible.
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We have a lot of unique populations within our students on campus.
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So exploring that as well and then Last summer, we brought back in-person orientation And so that was, we’re still a little tired from that, but it was a worthy cause.
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Super helpful. We saw our our enrollment melt rate decreased a few percentage points I don’t have a direct correlation, but we know there was definitely an influence there with getting folks connected. And I mean, one of the biggest things for us too is
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Students feeling disconnected in this virtual orientation program we had as opposed to you know you show up in fall and that’s when you start making friends in person. Now we brought back for decades, we had an in-person summer orientation program so
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Now their opportunity to actually make friends in the summer in person, connect with us on our campus.
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And then continue that in the fall when they get here. So we’re kind of like back to the normal, which feels really good
[Nathan Meyer] 00:05:27.000 –> 00:05:39.000
Yeah, amazing. And you sort of mentioned there the sort of uniqueness to your student population. I’d kind of just like to get a little bit of understanding about that, especially for people on this call. Curious to kind of know what the
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The shape of that looks like for you and that’s obviously going to kind of lean into some of the conversations we’ll have later about how that influences some of the stuff and some of the thinking that you have around orientation.
[Nicholas Cubita]00:05:50.000 –> 00:06:07.000
Yeah, in the fall, we typically bring in about a thousand first year students and 300 transfer students So it’s about an average size ish first year class, at least for an institution our size. We’re like a small to medium, but we do have a lot of transfer students.
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The Washington State Community College system is very developed and interconnected.
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And so we get a lot of transfer students that come in from there.
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And so our first year class in particular, though, there’s a lot of unique folks in there. So it’s It’s about 30 to 40% first generation students somewhere between 30 and 35%, I think, of Pell eligible students, so lower income.
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We have about… three years or four years of first year students, about 50% have been BIPOC students.
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Students of color. And so that’s been a big shift for our campus in general. We used to be a much more predominantly white institution statistically.
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And so exploring how are we meeting needs In terms of that.
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A couple other shifts were almost 50% in state with our incoming first year class now. And so we used to have more out of state, used to be more about like 30%, I think. So that’s been a shift for us.
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Most of them in this part of the state as well, so more local, and that connects to another change where about 20% of our first year students are commuter students now.
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Which is a very different experience and brings other challenges than our other students who actually live on campus.
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So a lot of groups there, lots of needs to meet. And then making sure you know our students who also fall outside of those groups, how are we not making it feel like.
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Well, you don’t fall into one of these special categories or like something, you know, like, how do you also feel included here while we’re highlighting and purchasing support for other students where we know that like some of these identities could
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Have more challenges with them.
[Nathan Meyer]00:07:50.000 –> 00:08:06.000
Yeah, absolutely. And I’m curious, you know, what kind of active roles do you take in ensuring that you’re building programs to meet the needs of all those students? I mean, you have a lot of different demographics there. And I also think, you know.
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Quite interesting your point of commuting students and that experience for a student is going to be completely different to those who are on campus and How do you, you know, it’s a lot, isn’t it, to build these programs and to run these events? How much…
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Consideration do you have to give to that? And I guess it’s sort of touch of personalization or care that you build into your orientation programs.
[Nicholas Cubita] 00:08:28.000 –> 00:08:46.000
Yeah, one of the things we do for that group in particular is when we Even the summer before we brought back our in-person programming, we actually held, we knew that commuter number was continuing to increase. So we like technically the year before was when we went back to in-person programming, but not like full on.
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And so we called it the Commuter Connections Family Kickoff. And so it was just a couple hours on campus. We picked like a random day in August.
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So about a month out from when they were going to start because on the quarter system, our classes start like mid-September usually And so we just invited commuter students and their families to campus.
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And try to highlight specific resources so we know if they’re commuter students, there’s likely a financial issue or challenge where it’s too expensive to live on campus. So that’s one of the main reasons they prefer to live at home or need to live at home.
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And we also know those students intersect a lot with our BIPOC identities and sometimes our Pell eligible identities. There’s a lot of overlap there when we’re looking at our retention and like our incoming group.
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We found some success with that program. We’ve been slowly building it and trying to figure it out but That’s one in particular where We have an office on campus called the Mosaic Center. They’re one of our closest partners.
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There are student DEI facing office. And so a lot of the groups that I mentioned, they fall under the purview of support of this team. And so we work really closely with their team collaboratively to identify what are the needs and trends you’re seeing working directly with these students? What are some of the onboarding needs that we need for them and orientation? And how do we create something
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That kind of meets those mutual outcomes that we’re aspiring to meet.
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And really for us, it’s like, yeah, great. We want you to get connected with orientation. It’s really important for you to get connected with their center. They have specific dedicated spaces on campus.
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That we tour them at. They have specific clubs and resources and for we have a food pantry on campus too for folks who have food insecurity.
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And so really trying to make sure that they feel like fully prepared as much as possible because it’s all about setting them up for success with the resources we have on campus.
[Nathan Meyer] 00:10:43.000 –> 00:11:07.000
Yeah, definitely. No, that’s great. And I think that gives a really good context to the work that you’re doing there and how you’re approaching orientation. And I’m curious the kind of other side to that is how do you involve the students in that process of thinking about delivering orientation you know is there certain feedback that you try to engage that allows you to influence the way you design or deliver orientation or evolve it kind of
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Event after event or year after year
[Nicholas Cubita] 00:11:10.000 –> 00:11:21.000
Yeah, our student team, we have about 40 to 45 orientation leaders And there are the folks who come in and they like lead all of our sessions. And so they’re often like our big sounding board.
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To run ideas by and whether that’s we’re at a training session and it’s like, hey, everyone, I had this idea like what do you all think about this and get like a general pulse or like maybe they happen to stop by the office that day just to say hi.
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And it’s like, hey, come here, I’m working on something. Take a look at this. What do you think about this idea?
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But in addition to them, we also hire a few student leaders. We call them our orientation coaches or OCs.
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And they’re like our senior orientation leaders. So I know that’s really common for a lot of orientation programs in particular where folks will have like that tiered student leader model. These are the students who work with us really from like
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Roughly January all the way until early October. And they’re like on our professional staff team or less.
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And so they’re the ones who everything we go through where last summer we adopted slate technologies where we were building an orientation portal. And that’s something where one of our students happened to be in the office where we were like.
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How will students interact with this portal or what if we move this button or this menu over here? And I literally open the door. He’s like, Bennett, we need you. So I was like, come in here.
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We can come up with whatever we want until the cows come home or whatever, right? But at the end of the day, it’s like.
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You know, he said like three or four things that we immediately were like, oh, why didn’t we think of that? And it was like.
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One of them was just like, put a little drop shadow on this menu. It’ll look cooler for us, right? And the other one was like.
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Don’t organize the dropdown menu this way. Do it this way and let it sort that way and those kinds of things because like that’s easier for us and I’m not 18 to 24, not anymore. And I didn’t go to undergrad here, you know, so it’s really, I think
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Pulling them in in those kind of opportunity moments but also Anytime we come up with a new session that we’re just going to pilot we meet with them first and like talk it through and we kind of go with their gut. But then something really critical we do afterward, like especially last summer when we brought back our in-person orientation
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We do debriefs at the end of, we do like little ones at the end of every day, but especially for overnight sessions.
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We do a debrief at the end of it and we go session by session like what went well, what didn’t go well, where’s our growth opportunities? What stuck with students? What really gained traction?
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What did they like absolutely hate what bond like let’s call it all out And so, you know, more often it’s, well, students want more fun or like, let’s just make orientation all icebreakers and groups. And like, that’s great. And we continue to try to find ways to enhance more of that.
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And, you know, there’s critical things people need to learn as part of their onboarding for orientation. So it’s kind of striking that balance.
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Of like how do we take that student input and it’s really valuable and like great like what we did was not fun enough like that’s really important because if you’re not having fun at orientation, you’re not learning the information, you’re not going to retain that information.
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And some students come to orientation and they’re still shopping around at different schools, you know, and so it’s also We really want them to know that we’re setting them up for success in this place this university feels like their home.
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For the next four years. And so really setting them up that way. So we Some of it’s structured and some of it’s a little impromptu, which some of those impromptu moments are the best ones, honestly.
[Nathan Meyer] 00:14:38.000 –> 00:14:47.000
Yeah. Have you got any good examples of when you’ve made some of the boring stuff more fun have you you know have you got any ways in which people might be able to approach some of that?
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The things you have to do, but it needs to be a bit more entertaining for the students.
[Nicholas Cubita] 00:14:48.000 –> 00:14:51.000
Yeah, we…
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We do. We do a session, we call it hashtag new beginnings. And it’s something I worked on with colleagues a few many years ago, actually.
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At a prior institution. And so I brought that here. It’s a conversation about stages of transition as you’re coming to university. And so it’s, you know, ending, losing, letting go, and then the neutral zone, which is like your roller coaster phase. And then your new beginnings where you like lean in hardcore.
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And so it’s very much like research theory like data driven, like total nerdy stuff that like I totally get like deep dive into and super excited about But we tried to make it fun. And so, you know, it’s like we do letting go and we put our Elsa meme up there and we’re like, is Elsa still relevant? You know, like, how are we feeling about Frozen and like.
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Those things or it’s like, great, that didn’t land last time. So I mean, some of it with that one feels like you’re live on stage. It’s a little bit of like a stand-up moment.
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And so some of it is really like, you know, like what’s landing and what’s not like great that thing or like that video is not working. And so that’s one that’s meant to be both like informative but balanced like student interaction. It’s like great Where should we pause and like ask them a reflection question and they have a worksheet that they do like as that session goes on.
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And so I think that’s one where we did a lot of tweaks throughout that last summer as we continued to like pilot it and then Even now, there’s a whole bunch of ideas to like revamp it for this year.
[Nathan Meyer] 00:16:20.000 –> 00:16:34.000
Yeah, that’s amazing. And I’m curious to know, and you know i have to I have to ask you know do you do you use technology like Guidebook for any of this stuff like how are you integrating? I know you mentioned slate as well. How are you integrating these tools to
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Enhance this experience but also keep some of the traditional components of orientation and the importance of information and resources and everything together like how are you balancing that and how is technology helping you in delivering that.
[Nicholas Cubita]00:16:49.000 –> 00:16:54.000
Yeah, I mean, I think, but I’m not being paid to say this, but Guidebook has been a game changer.
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And so I’m receiving no benefits or discounts or anything. But no, it really has because for us, I mean, we’re in the Pacific Northwest. Sustainability is a huge value of like this region of the country in particular.
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And it’s also a value on our campus. We have something called the La Datasi Action Platform.
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Which is a Jesuit. We’re a Jesuit Catholic campus. That’s a Jesuit values integrated sustainability platform and initiative we have going on on our campus.
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Where we’re trying to be a leader of sustainability for universities in the country. And so one of the big things we do with that is we don’t print a lot of things. We put our posters out but We don’t print a schedule for students. We used to many, many years ago, but we’re kind of at a point where like everyone wants it in the palm of their hand, you know, or accessible on their phone as much as possible.
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And we also have families and supporters coming where they’re like our not so obvious audience sometimes but like a huge audience. They help bring our students along in this journey. They’re going through their own transition, which is sometimes harder for them than for the students. But I mean, a big thing for us is not only can we get the schedule in there
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And really find ways to tweak that over time. And like, shout out to Hannah, who’s our person with Guidebook who are um our partner who helps give us ideas along the way of like, great, you know, our first year we organized the schedule and we like listed 100 million things. And she was like, try to organize it this way. And we shared that with our orientation leaders and they were like, oh my gosh, this is so much better.
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And they love the app. They love it. Even when we had our virtual program, we put our virtual sessions in there. So even when you’re not on campus, you can use it.
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To kind of track along. So we kind of say like you have orientation in your hands all summer you know It’s like right at a click for you.
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But one of the great things beyond the schedule, which I know is like a huge function of Guidebook, is the resource sharing.
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Orientation, we need to share like every single resource with students and kind of like really not make that overwhelming as possible, but also help them make sense of what that means.
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And so being able to put the list feature in Guidebook has been especially helpful.
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Because it’s allowed us to group our different kind of like cluster different resources So we have one that’s like all of your academic resources. Like we have a section that’s like parent and family resources. We have one that’s all about like health and wellness in there. So it’s kind of like.
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You know, if we just listed everyone, there would be like 800, which would be terrible, right? No one would retain that. Students would look at that and be like, no, right? They would just close the app.
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And so I think that’s been really helpful to kind of like chunk up and centralize that information.
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And we know with Gen Z too from research that chunking information is also especially helpful because it matches their learning style.
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And so I think that’s been another way that’s really helped us kind of, you know, a lot of it, honestly, we like copy paste from our website or other places. So it’s not like we’re drafting new information.
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But the fact that it’s like, great, you know, while you’re on your schedule or in between sessions on campus.
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You can click on these other things and see them there. And I think that’s really helpful for them.
[Nathan Meyer] 00:20:07.000 –> 00:20:24.000
Yeah, it’s definitely a piece of behavioral habits, isn’t it? If you give them one place to access all that information, they’re just going to feel more confident and comfortable getting their fingertips on it and like you say, not feeling lost and student engagement and student retention are
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Really important. And, you know, it is a competitive landscape and using any tool that’s going to allow you to streamline some of that and communicate a little bit easier with your students is going to be beneficial do you have
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You mentioned hannah who obviously I agree is great and it’s got a wealth of knowledge and tips. Do you remember you were talking about your schedule and how complex it is. Do you remember any of the specific advice that she gave in how to
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Make that more digestible.
[Nicholas Cubita] 00:20:52.000 –> 00:21:08.000
Yeah, our first year with Guidebook, when we listed out our groups during fall orientation, which we call fall welcome If the group met at three o’clock, we listed out like groups one through however many groups we had like 25
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And when you look at the schedule, then you see like 25 things in a row that all start at the same time.
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And at the time it made sense. And I didn’t know other ways that I could like organize it in there.
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And so one of Hannah’s really helpful points was, you know, like just put one time block and then in like the information section for that, list out like, oh, like.
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Group one is meeting in this room. Group two is meeting in this room where it’s like, hey, and you know, under the location section, we’ll list out like um It’s just something to the effect of like, you know, like open to find location, that kind of thing. So it’s like, if you know your orientation group number which
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We send them through like an email, but also on the first day of fall orientation, we use a text message from Slate.
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To say like, hey, here’s your orientation leader’s name. Here’s your group number.
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To really help. It’s kind of like we can set up Guidebook however we want, but we kind of have to set them up to understand how to navigate Guidebook and what we’re putting in there. And I think that’s really critical because otherwise it’s just like.
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Good luck. Here’s another app and another technology we’re asking you to use. We’re like, you know, it’s how many platforms do college students have now that they’re using?
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Outside of those. So I think that’s been one of our biggest takeaways. And it also very much condensed what our schedule looked like. So you’re not like scrolling and scrolling and scrolling to find what you’re looking for in there.
[Nathan Meyer] 00:22:28.000 –> 00:22:46.000
Yeah, no, that’s great. And I feel… When you’re thinking about that student experience and like you say there are there’s a lot of technology, a lot of platforms being utilized by different universities. Do you get a sense of the students
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Opinion of different technologies like do you have those feedback loops with students? Are you kind of monitoring how They engage with a product like Guidebook and what their feelings are about how the product is performing and stuff like that. What kind of
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Relationships you have with students when you’re assessing technologies performance at your orientation events?
[Nicholas Cubita] 00:23:05.000 –> 00:23:24.000
Yeah, we do when we do our surveys after each event, we always include like tell us about the orientation app. So we don’t call it Guidebook. We just call it the orientation app. And so You know, like, was it organized well? What helped you? What was not helpful? All of those kind of questions and so
00:23:24.000 –> 00:23:31.000
We mostly get responses where they’re kind of just like, it was just great to have it.
00:23:31.000 –> 00:23:41.000
And I think it’s kind of vague and like, you know, I love having the specifics a little bit more than that sometimes But really what’s helpful is like, we know that it’s working for folks. We’re not getting the feedback that’s like, I want
00:23:41.000 –> 00:23:54.000
A printed schedule, you know, like we do put some resources like online as well I think there’s been a couple events where we’ll print a couple things up, but otherwise it’s like no one’s clamoring for the paper in hand.
00:23:54.000 –> 00:24:19.000
Which is really nice, you know, because if that was resounding feedback, we might be considering like going in that direction, like in addition to Guidebook, we wouldn’t get rid of it, of course, they think. But it’s nice too that you know that that’s feedback from both students and our like families and their guests that come as well. So that’s helpful because you know that’s cross-generational, which is really great to see that like, great, we’re like meeting needs across all of our audiences.
00:24:19.000 –> 00:24:26.000
But I think it’s also helpful for them to where they can see all those resources in there and we get good feedback about that as well.
[Nathan Meyer] 00:24:26.000 –> 00:24:42.000
Yeah, brilliant. And I want to step away from technology specifically and you know at the early on when we were chatting you were mentioning you know the different demographics that you’re you’re working with it working with at seattle university
00:24:42.000 –> 00:25:00.000
And, you know, it is a competitive landscape and students do want more personalization. They kind of want more relevancy when they’re assessing universities or attending events like orientation. I’m just curious to know What role, if any, does personalization play in your orientation program and
00:25:00.000 –> 00:25:07.000
How do you ensure that students are receiving relevant information or the most relevant information to them.
[Nicholas Cubita] 00:25:07.000 –> 00:25:19.000
We try to build in choice and and as much of the like choose your own adventure aspect of orientation where For the most part, when they come to our in-person events.
00:25:19.000 –> 00:25:24.000
I would say probably like 80 to 90% of the schedule is structured out for them.
00:25:24.000 –> 00:25:45.000
Which is helpful because we kind of like guide them along the way as they’re going through all their sessions and events. But we always also try to build in like, great, we’re going to either something that’s a rotation or there’s like, you know, our campus activities or our campus resources fair like that’s a great one where it’s like it’s optional but like you can pick what tables you go to you know so it’s
00:25:45.000 –> 00:25:58.000
Different sessions like that last year in our summer sessions, we tried a few different things where You know, we know housing, student financial services on our Mosaic Center that I mentioned earlier, those are three big resource areas. So we developed a rotation where it was like.
00:25:58.000 –> 00:26:14.000
When you weren’t having lunch, you had to like pick one of those. And it’s like, you know, you could like you could go here and your parent could go there for example or like you could both go to the same one. Whichever one felt like the most pressing need or area of interest for you. So we try to build that out, but it’s really
00:26:14.000 –> 00:26:18.000
The Choose Your Own Adventure is a bit more prevalent in our virtual programming.
00:26:18.000 –> 00:26:31.000
And so for each of those Not for every single one maybe but for each of those groups, I think, and then some of them combined, like we work with the Mosaic Center where, you know, for each of these targeted groups we’re trying to connect with.
00:26:31.000 –> 00:26:35.000
How are we offering a virtual session for each of them?
00:26:35.000 –> 00:26:49.000
So we know that like, you know. Students are seeing it visually. They’re seeing the representation and they may not always be available at the time, but a lot of our sessions we also record, we get them on our YouTube channel so that folks can watch them afterward.
00:26:49.000 –> 00:27:12.000
So we do those. Some of those we do like student only where a lot of our sessions are for students and families to join, but we’ll do some student only ones so they can get their more like personal connection or, you know, their family or guests are like not in the room with them if they want to ask questions or like find folks in there. So that is. And then one of the other big things we’ve done that builds that in is
00:27:12.000 –> 00:27:19.000
In august where we don’t have so many events, especially for first year students.
00:27:19.000 –> 00:27:38.000
We work with our student clubs and organizations And we have them host socials. And I always joke that it’s the no adults in the room conversations where I say, I remind you that when you When you come to orientation and you come to college, you’re an adult. They’re not all 18 yet, but you’re an adult.
00:27:38.000 –> 00:27:55.000
And so we say that, but we also are i mean every it’s like club soccer is probably going to reach out to me in like three weeks. They’re always ahead of the game where it’s like They love hosting that. And for us, it’s great because we get students even outside of our orientation staff
00:27:55.000 –> 00:28:09.000
To get involved and they want to help onboard new students. They want to like, you know, bring them into the community and also really help like onboard them and also recruit them, which is great for their organizations to build those connections early.
00:28:09.000 –> 00:28:23.000
And so we found a lot of popularity with that. And so we’ve kind of come up with our process where once the clubs re-register for the next academic year, then we work with their new club leaders to like pick a date and a time and all of that
00:28:23.000 –> 00:28:33.000
We set up the virtual events for them through Slate. So it’s all good to go. And then it kind of like runs itself, but they have some of our best attendance out of all our virtual events.
00:28:33.000 –> 00:28:40.000
And it’s really full choose your own adventure. You could go to none of them. You could go to all of them, like figure out what works best for you.
00:28:40.000 –> 00:28:53.000
And it’s really more individualized to their interest. I think the one other thing I would just say real quick is working in Slate using the email and text like logic for who we’re contacting about what.
00:28:53.000 –> 00:29:12.000
Has been really helpful because as we go through like our new student checklist items of like tasks that need to be done or if there’s specific groups we want to receive like commuter students get a specific message about commuter student life and resources on campus. That’s something where it’s been really helpful because based on how we tag them in the system.
00:29:12.000 –> 00:29:20.000
We’re not just sending generic emails and messages out to every single person, or even some emails we do send out, we’re building in like.
00:29:20.000 –> 00:29:25.000
Conditional logic within that message where you might only see certain paragraphs that are listed in there.
00:29:25.000 –> 00:29:30.000
And so we found that helpful, especially because like I said, like orientation is so overwhelming.
00:29:30.000 –> 00:29:44.000
And so stressful for students and families. Let’s not send you everything and have you figure out like we’re in this email do I need to find what’s most relevant to me? Like, no, we know some of these things. So while you can find those general resources on our website and in other places.
00:29:44.000 –> 00:29:51.000
What we’re going to send out to you is going to be more individual to who you are and what you’re bringing to the community with you.
[Nathan Meyer] 00:29:51.000 –> 00:29:56.000
Yeah, that’s brilliant. And if you try and do you use Guidebook for any of your personalization at all?
00:29:56.000 –> 00:30:03.000
Yet in terms of you know the push notification features and kind of the audience management components for that.
[Nicholas Cubita] 00:30:03.000 –> 00:30:16.000
We do. Yeah, we do the, we use the push notifications for like specific event reminders, either ones that are required or we really want to push where especially the social interaction events.
00:30:16.000 –> 00:30:37.000
So we use it for that, which we find helpful but We’re not currently using the tracks in the schedule, but based on our schedules built, we started using the tracks our first year and then we realized that the tracks weren’t actually super different from each other. But one track that we do still use is for the
00:30:37.000 –> 00:30:53.000
Parent family and supporters, excuse me. And so we find that’s helpful because, you know, the way we build the schedule in, it’s like you see everything for like day one and day two of overnight orientation in July. But that’s helpful because it’s like if you click your parent family supporter track.
00:30:53.000 –> 00:30:58.000
They go to different sessions for the most part. So they’re able to like pull out and see what’s just for them.
00:30:58.000 –> 00:31:13.000
So we’ve kind of gone back and forth with like some of the group stuff, but part of it’s our team capacity and what can we really like build out, you know, but I think we get experimental with the track aspect and see like
00:31:13.000 –> 00:31:22.000
Does the track stick with them or not? And so we’ve had kind of like moderate traction with it, but I think that that’s less of the feature and more of just how our program is built.
[Nathan Meyer] 00:31:22.000 –> 00:31:38.000
Yeah, no, that makes sense. And I think, you know. Different tools going to serve different purposes and that’s the the beauty of technology and utilizing different technology for different things you know you want it to deliver on its purpose and help you with the certain challenges that are specific to
00:31:38.000 –> 00:31:54.000
For your goals and needs. And you mentioned you know that overwhelming feeling for students and you know there is a lot going on in orientation and throughout that period. And I’m curious, how do you monitor student engagement. How do you kind of
00:31:54.000 –> 00:32:08.000
Keep the student engaged, but act maybe when you notice students are disengaging or they’re not maybe being able to understand or find the right elements of orientation for them are you are you kind of tracking that and being able to act on it at
00:32:08.000 –> 00:32:10.000
Various times or the right time
[Nicholas Cubita] 00:32:10.000 –> 00:32:26.000
In some formal and informal ways, like we do our post-event surveys and that’s always really helpful. We try to do them very quickly right after events. So we get like the closer impression within that time frame of understanding. And so we use that to really guide like our first year
00:32:26.000 –> 00:32:43.000
With our fall orientation scenes were like, I’m tired, I want more time in my room. The schedule feels too tight and packed. I need this and so that was a very clear like, oh, we need more breaks in the schedule and like we need to spread this out or like shorten this and just kind of make like
00:32:43.000 –> 00:32:52.000
They just want time to chill you know and i think a lot of In our roles as student affairs professionals in particular, it’s very much a focus on like.
00:32:52.000 –> 00:33:07.000
Especially when students get here, it’s like great like we need to keep them engaged, right? We can’t not have things for them to do And I think that’s both true and at the same time looking at the trends of who our students are and Gen Z and coming out of the pandemic like
00:33:07.000 –> 00:33:19.000
They’re exhausted and they’re anxious and they just want to set their room up. They don’t want to be forced to like go to this meeting where the orientation leader is going to talk to them. Even if they’re going to have fun, they’re like, I just need to like focus on this right now.
00:33:19.000 –> 00:33:25.000
Right. And so I think trying to work with our different campus partners and adjust our schedule to build some of those things in.
00:33:25.000 –> 00:33:44.000
And then even like name that on the schedule sometimes for them or be like free time, you know, like make it very extra clear for them like This is you time. Do whatever you want here. Part of what we do with that also is we try to make it clear which events are required and which ones are. Well, we don’t say which ones aren’t required, but we say which ones
00:33:44.000 –> 00:34:03.000
Are required. And so with that, it’s like, you know, like our new student convocation is a required event and our academic convenings where they meet with their deans. So we make it very clear in our Our first year we called too many things required because there were a lot of social events, or I should say my first fall rather. There were a lot of things where
00:34:03.000 –> 00:34:10.000
I knew the benefits students could have from that. And so I called it required and a lot of our feedback is like.
00:34:10.000 –> 00:34:20.000
If everything’s required, what’s actually required you know like what’s the most critical things I need to be at so We’ve pulled back from that, which has helped the past two falls in particular.
00:34:20.000 –> 00:34:28.000
But… I mean, part of it is numbers and I don’t always love that. Personally, I’m more of like a qualitative person myself.
00:34:28.000 –> 00:34:45.000
But also, you know, if 800 students show up to your class photo, like you’ve got a tradition rolling, right? And so that’s also something where it’s like, great, like we’ve got the momentum going year to year. That was, I brought our class photo. I think I have a Let me see if it’ll show on the camera.
[Nathan Meyer]00:34:45.000 –> 00:34:46.000
No. Nearly, nearly.
[Nicholas Cubita]00:34:46.000 –> 00:34:58.000
No. No. Well, it’s on our If you go to our homepage, it’s on our website and it’s in our app if you download it. But that’s something where I had done that at another institution many years ago. And so when I got
00:34:58.000 –> 00:35:03.000
Here for fall 2022, I was like, let’s just try this and see how it goes.
00:35:03.000 –> 00:35:09.000
We got like 200 students our first year where we just got the outline shape. And then the next year, 850 students showed up.
00:35:09.000 –> 00:35:15.000
Because they had seen the one from the year before. They were like, I want to do that. I want to be part of that.
00:35:15.000 –> 00:35:22.000
And so, you know, if we get a year where only 100 students show up, maybe they don’t want to do a class photo anymore, right?
00:35:22.000 –> 00:35:35.000
You know, that’s a balance of do we keep a campus tradition, which is a larger conversation, as opposed to like, what are the trends that we’re seeing in student behaviors but I mean, to me, it’s really like, how are we getting in touch with those student interactions
00:35:35.000 –> 00:35:45.000
And getting involved in it. Like last summer, you know, even our orientation leaders, they got through our summer sessions and they were like, oh my gosh, I wish I had this. Like this program was so great.
00:35:45.000 –> 00:36:02.000
It would have helped me just connect with people, learn more resources and like That in and of itself, if we got through the program and they were all like, this sucked, you know, like that would have been also helpful feedback to know like, great, like, you know, we thought this would be helpful, but students didn’t. So I think it’s like continuing to track that and a balance of like.
00:36:02.000 –> 00:36:08.000
The numbers and some of the informal and formal data collection on what the experience is.
[Nathan Meyer] 00:36:08.000 –> 00:36:32.000
Yeah, I love that. I love the approach of letting some things happen organically and let them you know lean into them as you sort of see trends beginning. But I guess, yeah, being confident sometimes to also step away from something if it’s not working anymore or if it’s starting to diminished slightly. And I want to jump into a couple of questions we’ve been having come in because they’re relevant to sort of what we’re talking about at the moment.
00:36:32.000 –> 00:36:41.000
The first one was just how do you denote what is mandatory versus not in the session? Is it in the session title or description? So how are you kind of making that clear to the student?
[Nicholas Cubita]00:36:41.000 –> 00:36:59.000
Yeah, we do a printed schedule for our fall orientation that’s kind of like the If you go to seattle you orientation and search fall welcome you can see an example of it. But we do a printed copy because it’s like four or five days, right? And so for that one.
00:36:59.000 –> 00:37:24.000
What we do on the printed version that will hang around campus. We’ll just note like with an asterisk where it’s like, oh, like these events are required, which is kind of a traditional method. But in the In the app, the way we list that for the schedule is we put like required in all capital letters like right next to it. So they know like specifically what that is. So as you’re scrolling through and you see the title of certain events.
00:37:24.000 –> 00:37:46.000
You see required in there. So it’s kind of, we’re not telling students what not to go to again necessarily, but it’s kind of like a, okay, if you’re scrolling through like this is like you need to be here kind of thing. And we, those are also events where even besides just calling them required, we do a bigger push for those. So like our new student convocation, as an example, again.
00:37:46.000 –> 00:37:52.000
About two weeks out, we do a message from our provost since he’s the main host of that event.
00:37:52.000 –> 00:38:05.000
We do a message out from our provost that’s an email invitation. So we do that more of like a formal invitation to that. And we also let them know like, you know, your deans are excited to meet you when you come to your convenings after convocation.
00:38:05.000 –> 00:38:17.000
And we do extra text reminders both through Slate, but also through our Guidebook notifications, where it’s like, you know, if we’re really pushing it, like you’re going to know you need to be there kind of thing.
00:38:17.000 –> 00:38:23.000
So that’s kind of the way that we’ve taken and that’s been helpful so far with navigating that.
[Nathan Meyer] 00:38:23.000 –> 00:38:38.000
Yeah, one thing I would say to that as well is, and you might, I know you don’t necessarily use the track feature But all your required sessions you could put under sort of required sessions track and then you could pin that individual track to your menu. So if anyone’s using
00:38:39.000 –> 00:38:50.000
Guidebook, that would be a really interesting way for students to just come into the menu and No, exactly the ones they have to attend and then they can explore the menu for the ones that they would like to attend. So that could be
00:38:50.000 –> 00:38:52.000
An interesting test for your next orientation
[Nicholas Cubita]00:38:52.000 –> 00:38:54.000
I just wrote that down because I hadn’t thought of that actually so
[Nathan Meyer]00:38:54.000 –> 00:39:09.000
So yeah, well, great question. I appreciate that one coming in. Another question we’ve got is, how do you track that student attendance in orientation and maintain interest in the mandatory sessions.
[Nicholas Cubita]00:39:09.000 –> 00:39:27.000
Honestly, we struggle. I don’t have a solid answer for that. I mean, part of it is We have our check-ins. And so in terms of like students showing up to events that they’ve our summer events that they have to RSVP for. We do our attendance. We do our tracking through Slate for that because
00:39:27.000 –> 00:39:41.000
The event signups are in slate for that. And so we do that there. We also… in the app, we don’t do tracking by the session, but we do kind of look at, you know, like who’s downloading our app.
00:39:41.000 –> 00:39:47.000
And what does app engagement look like? Because I know there’s some of the statistics in there on the back end of it.
00:39:47.000 –> 00:40:09.000
And that’s been really helpful because our first year we launched it where you could use it in the summer, but then you had the in-person schedule for the fall and it was like You know, summer, we didn’t get a lot of traction, but then right before fall, it like really blew up and a lot of people were downloading it. So we’re like, okay, like people are really interested in this. It’s getting traction. Like that’s working and then
00:40:09.000 –> 00:40:28.000
Last year, our numbers were like much, much higher. And they were also kind of matching our event attendance numbers. And so that was helpful to see, you know, if they’re actually coming are they using this this thing that we’ve invested in, you know, both financially but like human resources as well to be doing
00:40:28.000 –> 00:40:41.000
And so we found that really helpful. But it’s easier to do when we’re in our summer sessions because it’s a little more like control. We’re in the bubble for a day or two on campus. Whereas when it gets to our fall welcome program.
00:40:41.000 –> 00:40:47.000
It’s definitely a lot harder when we reach that last day, we’re always like, what do we put on the last day we’re like.
00:40:47.000 –> 00:40:53.000
It’s still engaging, but we have like important information and we also want to make sure we’re still getting attendance.
00:40:53.000 –> 00:41:00.000
And that’s often where we have certain campers, campus partners like our Title IX and our wellness and health promotions team.
00:41:00.000 –> 00:41:21.000
Do some resource sessions those days. And so we’ve gotten slow traction for the past few years. So we’ve been kind of tracking it over time. Some things have gone up a little or gone down a little and so Those ones we’ve not tracked the numbers like super specifically, but we’re kind of exploring, you know, if we’re incentivizing or doing like a
00:41:21.000 –> 00:41:37.000
If we’re doing a stamp card for like go to five out of eight required events and get entered into a drawing for like a squishmallow, which are really popular, or some other, you know, like a TV or something like that.
00:41:37.000 –> 00:41:45.000
Whatever the budget permits that year. Or like, you know, for us like Mariners tickets to a baseball game downtown, like that’s great, you know? So we try to do some of that to really push that.
00:41:45.000 –> 00:42:02.000
In a lot of ways, but we struggle with that. That’s one of the hardest things. And it’s, you know, students are going to Students are going to show up for what they want to be and what they need. And we can do our best to coax them. But it’s a little bit of like you can lead a horse to water but
00:42:02.000 –> 00:42:13.000
There’s parts of orientation that are required and we want you to be there. And at the same time, there’s this balance of, you know, we’re not going to literally force you to go through all these things. You might not be as set up for success if you don’t participate.
00:42:13.000 –> 00:42:25.000
But we also acknowledge, you know, with a lot of students and like the stress and anxiety that they’re going through with orientation like Hey, if you need to check out and like take your time or like go sleep in or like do whatever in your room like
00:42:25.000 –> 00:42:36.000
We really care about students wellness. And so I would rather them do that than like really force themselves and push them through and be burnt out by the first day of class.
[Nathan Meyer] 00:42:36.000 –> 00:42:48.000
Yeah, absolutely. I think the engagement piece you know we we run workshops here at Guidebook around very specific challenges. And I think that would be a really interesting one to get a lot of people together on because I’m sure
00:42:48.000 –> 00:42:57.000
It’s a challenge everyone has, but there’ll be some good ideas that can be shared there. So that’s something I’m going to take away for sure. I’m going to keep firing some questions at you because we’ve got some good ones coming in.
[Nicholas Cubita]00:42:57.000 –> 00:42:58.000
Yeah, go for it.
[Nathan Meyer] 00:42:58.000 –> 00:43:11.000
And I think this next one is um Yeah, it’s a really important question. So how did you get buy-in or convince stakeholders to move forward with the initial purchase of Guidebook as an event platform option?
00:43:11.000 –> 00:43:20.000
Or how do you keep that buy-in? I guess is another way to phrase it you know you weren’t involved in the initial purchasing decision.
[Nicholas Cubita] 00:43:20.000 –> 00:43:27.000
I was and I have quite a bit of autonomy in my budget.
00:43:27.000 –> 00:43:46.000
Part of it was when I came in when i came in our money was a little bit more rounded out because we hadn’t brought back our in-person events yet. And so I kind of had a bit of wiggle room when I came in. And I was like, oh, like, what does Guidebook cost? And it was a much greater deal than I thought because there’s a lot of third party companies out there and
00:43:46.000 –> 00:44:00.000
Some of them really charge through the roof, quite honestly, for some of their services. And very understandably for what they’re getting right in some ways but There’s a lot that we’re out of our price range. And I looked at this and I was like, oh, like Guidebook’s a really good deal.
00:44:00.000 –> 00:44:15.000
I had used it at like NASPA or ACPA conferences before. And so I just reach out to do like a demo and a quote and explored it. And I just, I mean, I’ll say it was a bit easy for me because I went to my supervisor and I was like.
00:44:15.000 –> 00:44:25.000
Hey, we’ve got money to do this and I want to do it. And she was like, great, let’s try it, you know? And so I had to work through legal and contracts and like all of that kind of stuff. And then, um.
00:44:25.000 –> 00:44:39.000
Also with our Marcom team to discuss with them, like, you know, like we’re getting an app. So what is like app store permissions and Apple versus Android store and like all of that And figuring all those logistics out. And so I have a
00:44:39.000 –> 00:44:59.000
Counterpart in Marcom, who is like our app manager for the university Who she and I have learned a lot together as we’re like, you know, we just got an email yesterday that was like the Apple store is contacting you about this update. And so we always connect when those come through of like making sure we’re up to speed so people can actually use our app.
00:44:59.000 –> 00:45:07.000
Making sure it all is aligning with our Marcom and branding strategy. We have the full branded version of the app, which is really helpful.
00:45:07.000 –> 00:45:21.000
Got our color codes and our icons and all our little things in there that really back to your individualization, like, you know, it’s not just like Well, he’s going to say black and white, but those are two of our colors. But, you know, we’ve got our hawk symbol and like all of that in there.
00:45:21.000 –> 00:45:33.000
You know, when we’re doing our contract negotiations, I have my team of legal counsel who they’re outstanding over Our first year we did a two-year contract, which I think is the initial, but I’ll leave that to Nathan to discuss.
00:45:33.000 –> 00:45:41.000
But then honestly, we went back and this is our first year of a five-year contract that we went into.
00:45:41.000 –> 00:45:46.000
Because we’ve gained the traction. We’ve seen the value and our campus has been very focused on like.
00:45:46.000 –> 00:45:54.000
How are we enhancing the technology we’re using in general across the board? And it’s been great because we use it. And then because of that, like.
00:45:54.000 –> 00:46:00.000
Our athletics team reached out and they started having questions and I think they did a demo with your team of like.
00:46:00.000 –> 00:46:13.000
How could we use this for our student athlete experience that they have designed over there? Our admissions team reached out and I think they also might have done a demo where they were like, we have huge events like you know like we would love to stop printing schedules if we can. How do we get in on this?
00:46:13.000 –> 00:46:25.000
And it’s kind of the thing now where like I have the contract and I’m the person, but I’m also like, hey, folks, if you want in on this or like, you know, if we have a certain month of programming happening on campus, like we can use this.
00:46:25.000 –> 00:46:43.000
And we do have Connect SU as our student engagement platform. And so I forget if it’s smart labs or I forget who the group is that actually hosts it as a platform but that’s one where we’re able to easily link in different things so we’re also
00:46:43.000 –> 00:46:55.000
Connecting across platforms And that’s kind of a big win for everyone. And honestly, it’s a big win for campus partners because every year when I send out the schedule, I’m like, hey, everyone, go download the app on your phone.
00:46:55.000 –> 00:47:00.000
You know, everything’s right there. And it’s really nice because then I don’t get as many questions as I probably would about like.
00:47:00.000 –> 00:47:14.000
What’s happening in orientation because you know everyone anyone on this call can go in and download it. And it’s like our president can download it, our students, our families like I want to go in and see what the orientation schedule is. And it’s just super easy.
[Nathan Meyer] 00:47:14.000 –> 00:47:34.000
Yeah, that’s great. And I’m going to say to Erin, thank you for that question. And we actually have a… a… document, a support guide that really helps people with that exact challenge of how do you convince and get stakeholders bought in. So I’ll follow up afterwards because it is a useful tool. I think sometimes it’s
00:47:34.000 –> 00:47:43.000
Being able to articulate that and it’s really a template you can use to design, to communicate to your stakeholders. So I’ll be sure to follow up with you afterwards.
00:47:43.000 –> 00:47:49.000
We’ve still got a few good questions here. So I want to continue while we’ve still got a little bit of time.
00:47:49.000 –> 00:47:59.000
One of them is, have you found parents, families and supporters using Guidebook and do they find that you do they find it user friendly?
[Nicholas Cubita]00:47:59.000 –> 00:48:05.000
Yes, definitely. And I think especially last year. When we brought back our in-person programming.
00:48:05.000 –> 00:48:14.000
Part of how we also marketed that to them, we send it out in our like one week reminder email. We’ll be like, here’s the link to the orientation app, download this.
00:48:14.000 –> 00:48:28.000
But we also send that in a link in a text the morning of that goes with our parking link also And then we also at the check-in table, we have our QR code and it’s like, hey, have you downloaded the orientation app yet? Like, if not
00:48:28.000 –> 00:48:32.000
You know, like scan this QR code and you can do that right now. And I would say like.
00:48:32.000 –> 00:48:49.000
At least 80% of folks who show up, both students and their families are like, oh yeah, like we downloaded that last night. Or like, yeah, we opened it up like where it’s good to go. And so we know folks are on there. And then even in our welcome session, it’s the last thing I put on the screen before we separate the students and the parents.
00:48:49.000 –> 00:48:57.000
We throw the QR code up and so anyone else is like holding their phone up where it’s like, if you haven’t downloaded this yet, please do it. That’s where your schedule is.
00:48:57.000 –> 00:49:11.000
Our students navigated a little bit more easily, which is not super surprising because the younger you are, the more tech savvy you tend to be, you know, especially Gen Z, I know they joke about being born with a phone in their hand, but they know
00:49:11.000 –> 00:49:19.000
How to navigate all of that, right? And so sometimes our families need a little bit more help, but really it’s just a matter of like.
00:49:19.000 –> 00:49:33.000
We’re all learning new technologies constantly and you know how we organize it is just unique and so helping them find their way with it. But I think generally I haven’t found that folks struggle with it. And again, too, like we haven’t had a
00:49:33.000 –> 00:49:39.000
Anchoring for like, well, I just want a printed schedule. Like, I don’t think we even got that question last year at all.
[Nathan Meyer]00:49:39.000 –> 00:49:40.000
That’s great. Yeah.
[Nicholas Cubita]00:49:40.000 –> 00:49:46.000
Which is great. Yeah, I think it was like, where’s the schedule? Download the app. No questions. Great. Take it with you.
[Nathan Meyer] 00:49:46.000 –> 00:49:53.000
Yeah, that’s great i mean being able to fully eliminate some of the printed schedules as well, even just on a cost and waste.
00:49:53.000 –> 00:50:00.000
Is just a big benefit. And, you know, it’s extra work to design and to get printed so Yeah, that’s good if no one wants it anymore.
[Nicholas Cubita] 00:50:00.000 –> 00:50:10.000
I think we would think we would, without getting specific, I think we would spend more on printing than we do on our Guidebook contract, quite honestly, every year so that’s really helpful too. And I think that relates to the other question about buy-in where it’s like we would spend so much more.
[Nathan Meyer]00:50:16.000 –> 00:50:37.000
Yeah. And I think those costs, you know, those costs are going up and up and up as well. And especially if your schedule and I worked in events for over 12 years and for there’s many times where I would have a schedule or brochure printed and then the day before, you know, even sometimes the evening before someone something would change, something would alter.
[Nicholas Cubita] 00:50:37.000 –> 00:50:52.000
Oh, totally. Or like, you know, a room is locked or a ceiling tile falls and we can’t use that space or like Or, you know, it’s Seattle, it rains, right? So it’s like new rain location. Like we had that last summer where we were going to have folks out on our quad and it
00:50:52.000 –> 00:51:04.000
Wasn’t raining, but it had that morning and all the tables and chairs were wet. So we were able to send an update through the app. And at that point, most folks hadn’t really looked at the location yet on the schedule. They were still like.
00:51:04.000 –> 00:51:14.000
Checking in and arriving and stuff. But it was great because it’s like immediate update you know within like a minute it’s like we can get in there and like update it on our laptop bing bang boom, and it’s done.
00:51:14.000 –> 00:51:20.000
And we can do like a notification alongside that. So it tells people immediately and it’s not like.
00:51:20.000 –> 00:51:27.000
We could email them, but they’re not going to read that email in the moment. So it’s really helpful for those kind of moments as well.
[Nathan Meyer] 00:51:27.000 –> 00:51:37.000
Yeah, there’s another question that links to kind of that, which is actually how big is your team and how do you manage keeping that guide updated? You know, you just mentioned there, bing bang boom, which is a great way to describe how easy it is.
00:51:37.000 –> 00:51:39.000
Yeah.
00:51:39.000 –> 00:51:45.000
Yeah, how do you kind of manage the team and who’s involved with building and keeping the guide updated?
[Nicholas Cubita] 00:51:45.000 –> 00:52:10.000
Yeah, I have my first year I took it on because I was like, I want to dive in. I want to get really familiar with this before I start delegating it out. And so it was helpful to kind of like learn the ins and outs. I have one other full-time professional staff member. That’s my coordinator, Emily. She’s epic and amazing. And so she helps with that from time to time. But last year it was one of the, I delegated it to
00:52:10.000 –> 00:52:20.000
I had a graduate coordinator who happened to be in a computer science master’s program. And I was like, this is great, right? They were like, hey, I’m looking for hours and they were coming from another department.
00:52:20.000 –> 00:52:24.000
And I was like, I have the perfect project for you.
00:52:24.000 –> 00:52:38.000
Take Guidebook and run with it because it’s like they’re like building apps in their program and doing like much more complicated things where it’s like the i find the user the backend interface of Guidebook very exceptionally easy to navigate.
00:52:38.000 –> 00:53:08.000
Personally. And so that’s really helpful, but it was great where, I mean, for the most part, it’s our schedule and Most of the things we upload in there are with the spreadsheet function that then auto upload. So that process in and itself with Guidebook is particularly easy. But even for those one-off like event changes, I could turn to my ground and be like, hey, I need you to update this room location really fast. And he would just log in and get it done. And so that’s really helpful. We have two part-time grads to get back to the numbers question.
00:53:08.000 –> 00:53:19.000
And then we have about 40 to 45 of our student leaders But they’re not so much in Guidebook. They’re kind of like our sounding board for what we’re doing in there.
00:53:19.000 –> 00:53:25.000
But it’s my grad staff and professional staff where the small but mighty team that will focus on that.
00:53:25.000 –> 00:53:37.000
You know, it’s like, while my team’s running check-in, I can pop open my laptop and like do a quick update and like log in really fast. And I always have the Guidebook open during all of our events so that we can do that.
00:53:37.000 –> 00:53:46.000
It’s like really helpful to be able to just pop open a website and do that.
[Nathan Meyer]00:53:47.000 –> 00:53:56.000
Yeah, that’s brilliant. And we have one final question. I know we’re almost up on time and This is quite a straightforward question. It was just, have you utilized the SSO integration with Guidebook for your orientation program at all?
[Nicholas Cubita] 00:53:56.000 –> 00:54:19.000
We have not. And part of that is um we have not we’ve just kind of gone with the public version of it Which we found really helpful because it’s like you know if you’re like aunt’s cousin wants to know what you’re doing at orientation or something it’s like literally anyone on this call again you just go type in Seattle U orientation. Our fall schedule is still on there.
00:54:19.000 –> 00:54:27.000
You’re going to scroll back, but it’s in there. So we’ve done that and we found that really helpful. We haven’t had any issues with it being public facing.
00:54:27.000 –> 00:54:41.000
In terms of like external people like commenting or like sometimes community members get really weird about universities sometimes in that way. So we haven’t had any issues or critiques in that way. And so we find that really helpful because we also know that
00:54:41.000 –> 00:55:04.000
Students. I mean, we use the phrase parents, families, and supporters because we don’t know who our students are bringing as their guests or as their supporters or, you know, maybe your aunt and uncle are local and you’re they’re kind of your local support system or it’s a cousin or international students, like it’s your like
00:55:04.000 –> 00:55:14.000
Your family’s family member or something like that. And so we find that helpful where it’s like no one has to use this specific ID to be able to log in to do that.
00:55:14.000 –> 00:55:27.000
I will say we’ve done other integrations in other platforms. So I know that like our campus has been really savvy with that and it’s been helpful in general, but we haven’t used the single sign-on because we want that public facing access for everyone.
[Nathan Meyer] 00:55:27.000 –> 00:55:50.000
Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. Well, Nick, we are nearly at an hour. So firstly, thank you so much for sitting down and having a chat with myself and Guybook today. We really appreciate you giving up the time and also really appreciate everyone for some really good questions there and tuning in and watching. But yeah, Nick, thank you so much for joining us. I hope you found it.
00:55:50.000 –> 00:55:52.000
Valuable and had some fun
[Nicholas Cubita] 00:55:52.000 –> 00:56:01.000
Yeah, thank you for having me. And thanks, folks, for your questions and for joining us and Feel free to email me from the Seattle U website. You can find me on there.
[Nathan Meyer] 00:56:01.000 –> 00:56:04.000
Amazing. And we’ll be in touch with what’s coming up on the Guidebook meet series soon. So thank you, everyone. And we hope you have a great rest of your day.