Successful Student Unions: Essential Qualities and Best Management Practices

External (Top Five) Survey

These are the questions asked of the people we met with at the universities we visited, using the Appreciative Inquiry methodology.

1. What inspired you to choose your position in university center management at your University? What do you most enjoy, value or find rewarding about it?
2. What is it about your university that enables you to operate a successful university center?
   1. The organizational structure?
   2. The leadership?
   3. The management or business/administrative structure?
   4. The funding structure?
   5. The culture?
   6. The physical environment (i.e., location, layout, physical structures, access to technology)?
   7. The mission of the campus?
3. Let’s start by talking about your organizational chart.
   1. What are the component’s services?
   2. Who’s involved? The students? The staff?
   3. How are decisions made?
   4. How does the team conduct itself and complete its work?
   5. In what way does the manner in which the people communicate and interact make it successful?
   6. How do you effectively manage the space that serves such diverse user groups?
4. What is it about this specific structure that creates or allows the center’s success?
   1. How does the center support the campus priorities, goals and mission?
   2. Does it have a different budgeting process or Human Resources process?
   3. Do you have administrative or support staff exclusively dedicated to the center?
   4. Is the staff available to the users beyond regular 8 - 5 hours?
5. Within this particular management structure, what do you think are your teams best practices that allow its success to continue?
6. If you had to do it all over again, what valuable lessons have you learned that would make you do things differently?
7. What mechanisms are in place to ensure that the management structure adjusts over time to changes in user preferences, campus demographics, fiscal climate, campus priorities, etc?
8. Will you please share a story that demonstrates your university centers success in serving the campus community as a result of your management structure?
   1. Why does this story stand out for you?
   2. How did the campus community benefit most?
9. How do you think the center has enriched campus culture and enhanced student life?
10. What features do you think draw the majority of the following user groups?
    1. Students
    2. Staff
    3. Faculty
    4. Community members
11. Do you have specific ways to track who the users are, why they come, and what the breakdown is by group? If so, who manages this aspect and how does it get reported to the management team as a whole?
12. What mechanisms are in place for communicating with the center’s users?
    1. How do they work?
    2. What key factors make them effective?
13. Imagine you have the authority, resources and support to implement cutting-edge innovations that would enhance the center’s management.
    1. What would they be?
    2. How would you accomplish that?
    3. Who else would you involve who may not currently be involved?
14. Is there something you would like us to know that we havent asked, or that has come to mind while we’ve been talking?

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