Martha Asselin, Dean of Student Affairs at Schenectady County Community College, talks about Regroup
July 14th, 2010
Joe: So, we’re here today with Martha Asselin, Dean of Student Affairs at Schenectady County Community College, part of the SUNY state system in New York. And Schenectady County is going on their 2nd year with Regroup.
Martha, can you tell us a little bit about how you’re using Regroup at Schenectady County community college?
Martha: Sure! We started using Regroup more for clubs and organizations and for students to connect with other students that are part of these clubs. It has also been a great feature for our Student Government Association, and they, through their leadership have encouraged other clubs and other students to connect. Students can start their own clubs, start their own organizations, get their own members in there, and we have more clubs now than ever before in our campus. Thanks to Regroup!
Joe: Can you think of some specific examples where people have benefited from the use of Regroup?
Martha: First and foremost, we’re a community college, we do not have residential facilities on campus. Our students are all commuters and so, how they can connect 24/7? They can get on to Regroup, they can connect to the club, see what’s going on, they can connect with other students. It’s been a nice social network for our students and how they can figure out to communicate with each other or participate in any of the activities, things that we’re doing. Many of the offices are using Regroup currently. We have the Job Placement Services is Listing - the Career and Employment Services - has their own site and I think they call it Career to Students; Career to College site and they have students that are on, helping each other talking about places to go for employment opportunities, getting their resumes ready, activities and such. We’ve been using it for our counseling center, when they’re doing workshops and announcements, they post invitations for students to come and participate in these workshops. Our Honor Society students are using it and they do a huge amount of work in our community service volunteer activities and it’s been a great way to recruit other students to join them when they’re going out to the community to do this.
Joe: That’s great! You mentioned social networking, can you tell us a little bit about Schenectady County Community College and your social networking efforts?
Martha: Sure! We’re just getting started with that. We are just starting to get out there and using Facebook and Twitter and reaching out and Regroup is one way that we can really communicate better with our students. Let me explain a little bit more!Each of our students is issued an email account once they come to the campus. As you know, many of our students already have other email accounts. They have their personal accounts, and if they’re working full time, they have work accounts too. So, adding on another college student email account, sometimes it’s burdensome to them.
Regroup offers a way that we can channel all that communication in one feed and that other Social Network contacts can go through Regroup. Regroup can post to Twittter, Regroup can post to Facebook and that has been helping us out and the students have one site; one place to login. It contains it, it makes life really simple for them. It makes it simple for us too, as administrators who are trying to post and get announcements out to students and to get feedback from students.
Joe: And I know I’ve seen recent messages from you about the water pipe breakage and other H1N1 alert and school emergencies. Can you tell us a little about more about those and how you use Regroup on those situations?
Martha: And that’s my favorite reason from using Regroup. I’ve been using Regroup. I’m the Chairperson right now on the Campus’ Safety Council. We’re always looking at ways to have in our plan. We’ve done business continuity, should anything fail, any system fail, what is our back-up for that?
Regroup offers us a chance, it’s housed off-campus at another site. If our email is to go down, our power is to go out, how do we get messages out? Regroup offers us an avenue to do that. We belong, because we’re part of New York State, we’ve been using New York Alert, which is a great tool, but there are times when New York Alert is not available for us or there’s a delay in the service.For example, there’s a major weather storm that’s taking place and hitting this whole region. Schenectady is just one of many colleges in this area. When we go to post, there’s a delay in the amount of time that’s being posted; whereas with Regroup, it’s instant and I can get that message out to our students in matters of seconds and sometimes even faster than what I’ve been able to do through our email system and also through the New York Alert System.
Joe: What types of alert have you sent out over the past year or two that you’ve been using the system?
Martha: We had a couple of different things that we’ve posted. We had water main pipe break, and we had to shut down the school almost immediately while the County was coming to work on that water main pipe. And, so we sent out an alert saying that college is being closed and that went out instantaneously and that was great!
We have had snow emergencies. And one example, there was a major snow downfall that took place in up-state New York. We were one of many schools that needed to announce that day. As well as high schools, every business was closing and we were going to be closing. We went to send out our New York Alert posting, it was well over an hour that it got from the time that we posted it, to the time that the message went out. But we posted it also on Regroup and Regroup went out instantly and the feedbacksfrom the students were, “We appreciate that, we never had to get in the car and start driving to school. We got your message first thing in the morning.”And,so that was great!
We had a small small fire that took place right near our library. We posted that we had to close down the building. The classes there were rescheduled, to go to another location and that was a great tool to have. In addition again to our email, in addition to other things, it’s going out to our students in multiple avenues, multiple ways. It’s going quick and it’s going really effectively.
Joe: As you enter your 2nd year with Regroup, what are some of the ways that you’re most excited about using the platform?
Martha: You offer a lot of different things that are happening. Your ‘Voice to Text’ I think you’re calling it, that’s one way of in touch with the students that have any type of disability, students that are visually impaired. We’re always thinking about different ways that we can get that message out to them and for them to opt to have it sent to them in voice delivery is a wonderful feature.
Regroup is one of the few platforms that we’ve been looking at as a Campus Safety Council that provides two-way communication. It’s a way for us to send a message out with information on safety. Where to go, where to evacuate, different routes that are taking place, as well as, getting feedback from the student or the receiver of that message that can say, “I’m safe” or “I am…traffic is blocked in this one exit route out, where do I go next?” We can be communicating back and forth and that’s a nice feature to have.
Some new things that I’m noticing about Regroup, I’m able to post pictures. I can post a map of an evacuation route if I need to do that. I could have a student post a picture of anything, that they might feel that we need to see. For example, we’re on a flood plan. If there’s an area that’s starting to flood, where the water is rising, if somebody sends a picture, that’s a wonderful thing! We can get that message out and there are some different usages that we can have with that as well.
Joe: We talked a little bit about integrating Regroup with orientation and the SCCC.edu email addresses and phone numbers of students. Can you tell us a little bit about yourpossible plans to use Regroup to get that contact information of students?
Martha: Sure! During our orientation programs, we’re going to be working with students and having the students not only connect to our campus email address, butwe’ll be showing them ways that they can use this address to connect to other sites through Regroup; for their Facebook pages and for Twittering and how they can all connect into that one domain in this one site. And it’s user-friendly and makes it so less complicated for the students versus having multiple email, multiple contact pages.
Joe: Cool! It was a pleasure to work with you, with Schenectady County Community College. We’re looking forward to your 2nd year. Thank you so much for your time today!
Martha: Thank you, you’re a great group! Thank you.
