Successful Student Unions: Essential Qualities and Best Management Practices

Mission/Vision

The need for a clear mission and vision dominated this section of the interviews at the Top Five. Within this context, several specific management practices stood out:

• The center’s mission must be clear and clearly communicated to those it will affect
• Goals first, methods later: start with what you want to achieve, leave the hows for later
• Staff and students must share a common vision
• The role of the center is to create and maintain a space that meets students’ needs first
• Students must be involved from the beginning
• Communication is crucial to any mission or vision
• Mission statement or vision for the center must reflect the diversity of its customers

Every administrator emphasized how important it is that the university center’s mission is clear to the entire campus community and dovetails with the campuss mission. Respondents said this clarity must include the ability of the center’s stated mission to adapt and adjust to changing demographics, new customers and services, and sources of revenue. Serving students must be primary, and acknowledged as primary.

Involving students from the very beginning was described as a fundamental part of identifying and refining a common vision. This was seen not only as fundamental to success in terms of the center’s primary goal of serving students, but also as a means of obtaining campus-wide consensus and “buy-in,” thereby defusing friction between students and center administrators before it had a chance to start. Respondents suggested identifying a common vision by beginning with broad principles and then refining these over time in more detail. For example, students and staff can initially agree on a list of the kinds of food services wanted, but hold off on the selection of specific food vendors. This level of detail can be considered later when discussing the “hows,” and requesting proposals from prospective leaseholders.

The team heard repeatedly that students’ opinions must be sought out at every step while creating or re-creating a center, and regularly once it is up and running. Administrative staff must go out of their way to make it clear that student opinions are not simply received—they are sought out as critical to their mission of meeting students’ needs. Communication within any administration, and between the administration and the students it serves, must flow freely at all times.

It is a primary goal at each of the Top Five to create a place where community develops naturally, extending the definition of learning and facilitating a beneficial mingling of social and academic spheres. Many of our respondents said they saw their role and their facility as critical in helping create a genuinely thriving community on campus; UCLA described their union as “a lab for the campus.”

Mission or vision statements for the university centers take into account the diversity of their customers: students, faculty, staff, alumni, visitors, etc. This is in turn reflected in a diversity of services, programs, and funding sources. Staff continually refocus on their center’s need for diversity and come up with new ideas to stimulate events, programs, and commercial offerings. This contributes to an atmosphere of relevance and vitality, thereby increasing traffic and revenue.

Culture/Business Models

In the course of analyzing data, several key themes emerged in the areas of organizational culture and business models as common management practices:

• Involve students in student union management
• Ensure customer service is an organizational priority
• Hire staff willing and able to serve students and the mission of the union
• Place staff in advisory and mentoring roles to students
• Involve staff at all levels of organization and decision-making
• Empower staff (professional as well as student) to make decisions to meet customer needs
• Communicate effectively across and throughout the entire organization
• Establish staff recognition mechanisms to encourage and reward exemplary performance
• Keep student union services and retail operations (e.g., retail, food, maintenance/trades, information technology, etc.) in-house

Whether by including them on union advisory boards/boards of directors or as employee managers in union operations, the Top Five student unions all consider the cultural element and business model of active and continuous student involvement in management a key ingredient to their success. The practice of hiring staff with a focus on serving students furthers the university’s mission by utilizing the union as a place for teaching and learning outside the classroom.

Although generally hierarchical, most of the student unions surveyed emphasize and utilize collaborative or team decision-making on many issues. Decentralized management is a popular business model at the Top Five student unions. Union administrators consistently point to the importance of staff empowerment as indispensable to meeting customer needs.

Throughout the student unions studied, an emphasis on communication enables the constant input of information into their feedback loops, involves people at all levels of the union structure, and gives them a voice. For instance, the student union at Wisconsin utilizes a “diagonal slice” when determining membership on union committees, which means that different layers of the organization serve together.

Regarding the staff recognition programs and the in-house services and operations at the Top Five, these types of initiatives foster a culture/ethos of excellent customer service. Placing services and operations within the student union ensures timely response to customer needs and further propagates the culture of excellent customer service.

“The biggest component for having a successful student union is support and having employees, senior management and the university administration buy in to wanting it to succeed. When you have that all around support, there is nothing you can’t do.” —Brenda Keagle, Event Coordinator, University of Arizona

“What I like about UMD is that people don’t get in the way of a good idea.” —Dr. Linda Clement, Vice President of Student Affairs, University of Maryland.

Operations

Governance and Organizational Structure

Interviews in this area revealed an interesting mix of governance structures and at the same time an equally interesting consensus as to the purpose of any structure. This relates to the approach outlined above whereby goals are primary and varied methods of achieving those goals are devised as needed. Several unions were in the process of considering changes to their organizational charts to improve their ability to serve students and their bottom line.

Briefly, these characteristics stood out:

• A board of directors where students form the majority—whether advisory or governing
• University Center administration’s dedication to serving students is explicit and codified
• Management team structure that fosters communication and collaboration
• Organizational chart that keeps services and many cash operations in-house
• A clear organizational chart with lines of communication, roles, and responsibilities
• Center operates as an independent entity

Most of our Top Five unions have in place a board of directors where students form the majority, but which includes staff, faculty, and alumni. With the exception of UCLA and to some extent Wisconsin, this board is primarily advisory, and ultimate power rests with administrative staff. One director pointed out that though the student government at his university was represented on the board, it was only one out of ten student voices there, and that this was critical to de-politicizing union policy and operations. At the same time, all administrators stressed their dedication to running their unions for students. The director of the Michigan Unions, for example, could not remember the last time he went against a decision of his advisory board of directors.

Every management team mentioned the importance of their union as an independent entity. The nature of most unions as wholly or primarily self-funded creates the need for them to function more like businesses, and make decisions based on their clientele and bottom line. The commitment of the union’s staff to serving students’ needs was often mentioned as critical in making this work from the universitys point of view. Since the various unions are seen as central to the mission of the campus they serve, our Top Five report high in their organizations; most report directly to the chancellor/president or to a vice president, usually of student affairs. Several mentioned the difficulty of split reporting, for example to student affairs and budget/finance.

This independence was reflected in a business model that keeps services (i.e., maintenance, trades, IT, custodians, HR, budgeting) and some or all cash operations in-house. Administrators work closely with leasehold operations to make sure they continually meet the needs of students. The union’s needs and expectations are made clear when requests for proposals go out to prospective vendors.

“Staff needs to provide the skill and continuity to manage operations—the boring stuff—so that students can drive programming—the interesting stuff.” —Loren Rullman, Director, Michigan Unions

Funding Sources

In the area of funding sources the Top Five have these in common:

• Self-funded business model
• Revenue streams beyond student fee income
• Continual investigation of alternate funding sources
• Balance between revenue generation and service provision

In this era of tight budgets, particularly at state institutions, student unions are being forced to become increasingly self-reliant to fund their operations and programming. A key management practice each of the Top Five shared was either the existence of a self-funded business model or the acknowledgement of the critical need for one.

Union operations at four of the schools studied (Wisconsin, Maryland, Arizona and UCLA) rely on student fee income for part of their funding. All of the unions augment this by generating revenue streams from fees for service (i.e., from room rentals, catering, etc.), food and beverage operations (run either by union employees in-house or by contractors), or various retail outlets including bookstores, printing centers, convenience stores, computer shops, etc.

Alternate funding sources were also discovered during the external survey process. For example, Arizona received contributions from both the campus bookstore and the Athletics Department for recent student union renovations. It should be noted, however, that although innovative and perhaps novel, this option was an isolated occurrence; none of the other student unions surveyed demonstrated the existence of this sort of funding stream. Also of interest is the student union membership system, a revenue-generating business model followed with considerable success at Wisconsin which draws heavily from the campus alumni community. (See Appendix 13).

Running a student union is an expensive undertaking —the annual budgets for the Top Five unions range from $10 million to $75 million. Given these numbers, the ability of a union to fund its own operations while maintaining a balance between revenue production and service provision to students, faculty and staff appears to be critical for a student union to be successful.

Finally, one innovative method of fund raising was brought up by Nick Adamakis, Marketing Director for the student union at Arizona. His suggestion was to utilize the concept of “branding” to produce and market goods at a cheaper rate than “traditional” established brands in order to generate revenue. The example he gave was Arizona’s own branded juice line, which competes favorably with the Naked brand juice line. “Marketing one’s own brands is important.” Another example is the marketing of ice cream produced at the university and sold by the student union at Wisconsin. This concept of branding to meet student/customer needs also resonated in interviews conducted with student union staff at Maryland.

“Student unions are robust beasts, but they are hungry, too...” —Audrey Schwimmer, Director, Michigan Union

Benchmarking

Respondents at the Top Five all do some benchmarking, but think they should do more. Commonalities include:

• Dedicated marketing/research department(s) to track organizational performance
• Effective communication and feedback loop

In order to benchmark organizational performance, respond to changing customer needs and desires, and track usage patterns in their respective facilities, all of the Top Five utilize in-house marketing and/or research departments.

All of the student unions studied place a premium on communication between union staff and customers to ensure customer satisfaction. Surveys appear to be a popular way to accomplish this objective. Of particular note is the ACUI Educational Benchmarking Institute Survey, which tracks survey results at dozens of colleges and universities (See Appendix 14). Additionally, internal surveys, post-event debriefing sessions, and customer comment cards also serve to foster communication between student union users and staff. Advisory boards/boards of directors (who serve as the eyes and ears of the union staff) also provide feedback and input from union customers. Finally, head counts, door counts, and retail/food transaction tracking also chart traffic patterns in student unions and provide valuable information.

The marketing departments in student unions also foster communication between student union operations, programming staff, and customers by disseminating information via a variety of media. Examples include bi-weekly ads in the campus newspaper, website postings, e-mail, signs and banners, plasma screen televisions, flyers, and marketing mechanisms (e.g., pizza cutters, computer screen cleaners, and magnets—all embossed with the student union’s respective URL address).

At least two student unions examined (Wisconsin and Maryland) are focused on making operational and programming decisions based upon the data collected by their internal marketing and/or research departments. Increasingly, this sort of data collection and analysis is becoming a critical tool in promoting student unions and their programs and activities.

“An ounce of data is worth a pound of opinion” —Marsha Guenzler-Stevens, Associate Director, Stamp Student Union, University of Maryland.