Are you a student housing director of a college looking to decrease the stress that occurred during last year’s move-in day? You’ve come to the right place. Housing departments have been stretched and have been asked to carry the burden over the past few years between dealing with a worldwide pandemic and more students than housing spaces. However, Collegeboxes has handled plenty of college moving experiences and can offer three tips to help improve your next Move-In day.
1. Reduce Campus Congestion
Your school has a plan for each move-in day. Incoming students are broken up in some order based on name or major to keep an order and limit the number of people coming in at one time. Streets will be blocked to create a control funnel to get people in and out efficiently. Resident assistants and student volunteers have been trained for weeks for the all-important day. Despite all that preparation, it still felt chaotic from the incredible amount of people in one space.
How can that change? Partnering with Collegeboxes. The No. 1 Student Storage and Shipping Provider is contracted by students and their families, but there are added benefits to schools working with Collegeboxes on move-in day logistics. One service that can help reduce congestion is pre-arrival delivery. Items that students have stored with Collegeboxes or shipped to Collegeboxes are placed in dorm rooms before students arrive on campus. This decreases campus congestion on move-in day and eases the workload for you. We will coordinate with residence life and housing for room access, and provide images of delivered items to students.
San Diego State University is one of Collegeboxes partners that uses pre-arrival delivery. Using that service and everything else Collegeboxes has to offer, the school cut down campus congestion by 11 percent in 2019 according to John Godfrey, the Associate Director for Business Operations at San Diego State University.
2. Elevating Your Elevators
Speaking of congestion, one of the biggest factors is elevators. Depending on the campus, elevators might be limited or not even be an option. This causes a lot of back up during move-in. There are a few factors you can’t control, like an elevator breaking down. Although, there are a few things that can speed up the process.
At Arizona State University’s Downtown Phoenix campus, there is a small elevator area with four elevators for two towers of students. The area gets backloaded because of the small area and large number of students leaving class at one time. You can only imagine the lines for move-in day, right? Actually, one simple role has helped that housing department efficiently get students and families in and out. They have elevator attendants that solely manage the flow of the elevators. That means no one is left waiting for someone to hit the button and they know how many people, carts, and boxes can fit into one elevator at a time.
Collegeboxes also uses professional movers that aren’t afraid to use the stairs if needed. Movers also take tremendous care when carrying boxes and items to dorm rooms, keeping the walls from getting scuffed and halls from being damaged. The less scratches and wall damage means the school doesn’t have to repair or repaint that dorm room, saving the school more in the long run.
3. Communicate, Communicate, Communicate
There are countless jobs that are easy to forget during move-in day like the elevator attendant. Ensuring everyone knows their exact job and role is essential on move-in day. The smallest change of plans can delay the rest of the day for the next round of students coming in later. Plan out this exciting time with everyone that is helping with move-in day, even the professional movers, and make a schedule or laid-out plan for everyone involved.
It’s even more important that students and parents know how move-in day works. Start at orientation for students and get everyone familiarized with the plan. The last thing you want is to have confused students and parents trying not to get lost and pulling movers away from their positions to guide them to the correct route. Send correspondence leading up to move-in day that includes a schedule, maps, and highlighted areas for the student like their designated time. Even a link to a small step-by-step presentation can be helpful for everything involved. On another note, a bonus of using Collegeboxes is that we coordinate everything with students and parents including parent phone calls.
There are a handful of ways schools benefit from Collegeboxes and there’s a reason we are the No. 1 Student Storage and Shipping Provider. Simplify your school’s move-in and move-out by partnering with Collegeboxes. Be like hundreds of housing departments and get a customized student moving plan specific to your school’s needs today!