Hi Kaitlyn,

At Georgia Tech, we just added Aunt Flow products to all student center facilities. Dispensers are located in each women’s restroom and each single-use all gender/family restroom. We also went with Aunt Flow’s disposal system – which is much more both user and custodian friendly – and we have one with each toilet in the…

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Hi everyone,

We’re exploring a tweak to how our <strong data-start=”421″ data-end=”451″>meeting room status lights communicate availability, and I’d love to hear if anyone has tried something similar (or found other creative solutions to prevent “squatters” when locking doors isn’t practical).

Currently, our rooms use:

<ul data-start=”661″… Read more

Hi Kevin,
In the academic year, we operate 24/7, but we go to GT Community Access only (aka card access) from 11pm-7am. We also make an announcement stating anyone remaining in the facility must have a valid Buzzcard and show it if asked. We will shift access when we get to the holidays or prolonged breaks.
Thanks,
Jonathan
Director of Operations…

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Hi Kevin,

At the Cohon University Center at Carnegie Mellon University, our default access strategy is:
6am-12a: exterior doors unlocked and open to the public
12a-6a: exterior doors locked, with tap access to all CMU community members

Our default operating hours (when we’re staffed and events can happen) are 8a-midnight (Mon-Fri) and…

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Hi Fellow Student Center Leaders –

I’ve been asked to gather information on what other campuses are doing surrounding access to their student centers. Currently, we (University of St. Thomas) have unrestricted access during our hours of operation, roughly 7am-12am daily.

Does your campus student center operate similarly? If you are a campus…

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Hi Kaitlyn,

Here is some information from UNC Charlotte:

1. What buildings are they in? Student Centers (2 Buildings); UREC; Health Center; Residence Halls

2. Does every restroom have products or only select floors in each building? Nearly every restroom. Some single stall restrooms do not have them due to lack of wall-mount space. Some single…

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Hello ACUI Friends!

Swarthmore Student Activities is trying to beef up our on campus event repetoire. Could you share vendors you’ve worked with in the past to bring fun events to campus? We use a lot of Bette’s Bounce (local to southeastern PA), but we’re hoping to expand since their rentals are always on campus. Any ideas or suggestions…

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Hello all,

We are currently reviewing how we address our aux units in our facility. Currently, in addition to food service, we also house the university card and parking office, and the university bookstore. At this point, the food service contract doesn’t speak to any montly/yearly space lease agreements. Our bookstore is over 15K sqft…

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Failed to mention that I am trying to match information on the third sheet. Exp. I want a student’s first name and last name AND the amount they were paid to match on the third sheet with their first name and last name AND then assign their position to them.

Smartsheet users… I have hit a speedbump and need some help. I am trying to move data from two sheets to an entirely different third sheet. Neither the Smartsheet help section or ChatGpt has helped, everything ends up “unparseable.” Any help would be appreciated.

Cross-posting. with Ops Comm of Practice

Smartsheet users… I have hit a speedbump and need some help. I am trying to move data from two sheets to an entirely different third sheet. Neither the Smartsheet help section or ChatGpt has helped, everything ends up “unparseable.” Any help would be appreciated.

Cross-posting.

Hello all! Our campus is going to be changing student engagement platforms, moving away from Involve, and are leaning towards Engage. We’ve heard of a number of schools in the past few years leaving Engage to move to Campus Groups. If you are one of these schools (or you’ve recently moved from Campus Groups to Engage) and would be interested…

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Hello! Is anyone’s institution giving away free period products (pads/tampons) in their restrooms? If so, I’d love to know the following information:

1. What buildings are they in?

2. Does every restroom have products or only select floors in each building?

3. How many times do you replenish a week?

4. Who oversees these products? Facilities, your…

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Hello! Is anyone’s institution giving away free period products (pads/tampons) in their restrooms? If so, I’d love to know the following information:

1. What buildings are they in?

2. Does every restroom have products or only select floors in each building?

3. How many times do you replenish a week?

4. Who oversees these products? Facilities,…

Read more

It’s extremely useful from an Operations perspective – it allows us to easily create tasks for our student staff to complete (and schedule when it needs to be completed), with up to date details on the setups and diagrams able to be attached, it’s been very effective. We also have made significant use of its Notes feature to be able to…

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Hey Cortney,

There are a couple of things worth checking to make sure you’re getting a good audio signal through Zoom. First of all, are you using an audio interface to get your microphone signal into the computer? Or are you using a USB mic to try this? Some USB mics may also have noise suppression built-in that you would have to adjust…

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Hi Sara!

Not hardware-based, as you had requested, but the automatic captions / subtitles feature in Microsoft’s PowerPoint is pretty impressive, and there are guardrails you can put in place easily around usage of the data. You can find out about the tool here…

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Test

Join us at this week’s COMP Community Chat to connect around recent events. We hope to provide space to process and share thoughts about the most recent events including how our campuses are responding and how our internal practices of supporting large events particularly those with invited speakers is evolving. Additionally, how are we managing…

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Hello everyone,

I wanted to bring a question to the community to see how other unions are managing a situation we’re working through.

We are ENG funded with a $0 budget and, for the first time this year, added a small student fee that helps cover some operational costs. That said, we are still largely revenue dependent. Our portfolio includes…

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Hi folks

We have a full time Facilities Operations Manager and we are looking to update his job description (it’s been about 4 years). In doing this, I thought it would be helpful to see what other people have on their job descriptions for a full-time facilities person. It might jog our memories or inspire our thoughts on things he ‘just does’…

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Hello,

The University Scheduling Office is exploring a camp management software for all camps hosted on campus. We’ve already demoed a few products. Does anyone have suggestions on which platform is the best? They all seem to have the same features with slightly different configurations.

Hi all!

We are getting more requests to livestream performances (bands, singers, etc.) and we are struggling with Zoom due to their background noise suppression settings. We have been unsuccessful in getting anything to come through well, despite making many adjustments on the settings. As a result, we are looking into options for an…

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Great news—this series is open to all ACUI members, even if you aren’t currently pursuing certification! It’s a fantastic professional development opportunity for mid-level professionals and others, offering the chance to learn directly from experts across college unions, housing, and recreation.

The 2025 ACUHO-I/ACUI/NIRSA Certification…

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Dear colleagues,

Reaching out to those institutions who either have an art gallery on premises or designated area where student artwork is routinely displayed. We are partnering with a few student organizations to highlight student art each semester. I was wondering if anyone had a rubric they currently use to guide the selection process…

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Hi Kourtney,

I know you might have made a decision on these already but in case you haven’t I wanted to share that we have them in our basic needs center. They are very easy to use and the check out process we have in place works as we require the students to swap ID for charger. The devices hold a charge for up to 3 hours per device. Great…

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Hi Everyone,

My name is Kaitlyn Dyleski and I am member of the Education Team for the 2026 ACUI Annual Conference from March 8–12 in Pittsburgh, and it is our hope that educational submissions help create a meaningful and engaging educational experience for all of our attendees. Students and professional staff from all specialties, levels of…

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Hi Everyone,

My name is Kaitlyn Dyleski and I am member of the Education Team for the 2026 ACUI Annual Conference from March 8–12 in Pittsburgh, and it is our hope that educational submissions help create a meaningful and engaging educational experience for all of our attendees. Students and professional staff from all specialties, levels of…

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Hi all! We are hoping to find a simple hardware-based device for live captioning that would operate similar to a stenographer in real time. However, it seems everything is AI based. Our concern is whether anything software-based would record/store content knowingly or unknowingly. As a result, we would have to obtain permission from every…

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Hello everyone, I am looking for institutions that provide storage for their student organizations. If you can share what storage options you have provided, I would greatly appreciate it!

Cory

We’re in the process of exploring diagramming software options for our university and are currently looking at <strong data-start=”255″ data-end=”296″>EventDraw, Cvent, Prismm, and Amadeus. I just learned that <strong data-start=”318″ data-end=”354″>Cvent and Prismm will be merging, which I imagine will shift the landscape a bit.

From past forum…

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Looking for institutions where the programming and operations department are housed together and have one Director. Please email me your org. chart at wlparris@uncg.edu. Thanks in advance.

If your facility could talk, what would it complain about? I’ll start; elevators. We have just begun to modernize our four cars, but our elevators have been nothing short of a nightmare for operations. Two of our passenger elevators are out of service, and one is currently being renovated. This leaves us with only one operational passenger car…

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Interested in anyone’s experience with marmoleum and/or epoxy for meeting room flooring. Thanks.

Good afternoon! Does anyone who manages a bowling center in their student center or union have participants sign waivers before bowling? We’re undergoing a risk management assessment, and I’d like to get feedback from others as to the level of risk mitigation practices in place at other locations.

Currently, we only require insurance from…

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Michigan, Virginia Tech, Rutgers-New Brunswick, others use Crowdfind, and it’s pretty cool and easy. Just need to let students know it’s out there. And we’d love to have them as a corporate partner!

https://rutgers.v2.crowdfind.com/public/#/busch/items

Just now getting to really look at this list and it’s great reminder of everything we should be thinking about with our staff (pro and students!) Thanks for compiling this!

Allison,

Thanks for this information, as I am just now looking into 7-Points. Would you be willing to connect offline a little more on the pricing, abilities, pros, and cons? I know that it can be difficult to share a lot of those things in public forums. my email is bradhill@iastate.edu

Massiel – I have been looking at that program as well and would like more information, including cost. Is it a pretty large price tag like reservation systems, or is it a reasonable cost like Social Tables?

Hello Dylan,

Thanks for bringing this up—Lost & Found really is one of those “unsung hero” services that deserves more visibility!

At UNT, we’ve been working on a few engagement strategies:

• Tabling during orientation and flash sessions to introduce incoming students to Union services, including Lost & Found.
• Partnering with our Marketing team to…

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Hello all. The Univ. of WA Husky Union Building (HUB) is looking for ways to increase promotion of our campus lost and found service to the UW community. I am curious what ways other Student Unions promote their lost and found in hopes that we can increase engagement with our lost and found service. We are looking for things like…

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The annual conference session proposal deadline is September 9. That is only a little over a month away. Now is the time to start working on your session proposals and/or recruiting colleagues to present sessions with you. Regional conferences are also accepting session proposals now. Your region’s deadline to submit may be before the…

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I orginally posted on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/timpmoore/) inspired by Larry Moneta and then decide to repost on ACUI Forum:

I’m watching the changes in higher education with great trepidation. Across the country, I see colleagues in student affairs facing layoffs, restructuring, and uncertainty—all while continuing to show up for…

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