Campus Card Office
The Campus Card Office made a record number of student ID cards this year (more than 13,000), and more than 4 million transactions were processed through the Blackboard Transaction System.
We have continued to refine our processes for the new Blackboard software installed last year and are preparing to upgrade to an expanded version of the same system in the coming year. The office staff continues to increase their knowledge of the Windows-based Blackboard Transaction System. The reporting system has been most challenging, for each new report requires great consideration. Other universities moving to this system voiced this as a concern. Sheryl Puckett of Arkansas State University and Kelley Line of Campus Card Office presented on this subject at Blackboard World, the Blackboard Transaction System Annual Users Conference, this year. The presentation received very positive feedback afterwards.
With one of the card printers reaching its end-of-life date, the manufacturer will no longer make parts for it, so we installed a new, next-generation ID printer. The University of Arkansas is one of the first universities to use this printer, and we are very excited to have it to support the continued expansion of the University.
Michael Christiaens, our computer support specialist, spent a great deal of time, in both the fall and spring semesters, supporting the first year of the new Razor Rewards program. Students swipe their cards for points at athletic and educational events to earn points. Those points were accumulated throughout the semester to win a variety of prizes. Students with the most points won prizes such as lunch with the Chancellor, iPads, and lunch with Athletic Director, Jeff Long. Michael was instrumental in creating the process necessary to accumulate and track the points, and on a weekly basis, he transferred the points to ASG and Athletics for prize distribution to students. It was much more time consuming than we originally anticipated. Michael makes all of our workloads easier by creating many computer processes that speed along the data on which we rely so heavily.
One of our ongoing problems has been the large amounts of meal plan changes at the start of each semester. It is a time-consuming process, and it is easy to make mistakes when interrupted. Because we have had to make changes in our spare time, which does not exist at the beginning of the semester, students get frustrated at the slowness of the changes. This year, we decided to take advantage of the RazorTemps program provided by Human Resources and brought in a RazorTemp for the primary purpose of making meal plan changes. The temp was trained on the meal plan changes, as well as ID cards and general office duties. This worked very well. It greatly reduced the calls and visits to the office regarding meal plans that had not yet been changed. She was able to make the changes first thing in the morning, so students were able to see the results quickly. Housing also reported a drop in calls to their office. We will be taking advantage of the RazorTemp program again this year.