Sara Shameem SUNY New Paltz Welcome CenterSpeaker: Student Manager- Monica FarrellAudience: The SUNY New Paltz Admissions staffForward to: The President of SUNY New Paltz

First off, I would like to thank you all, the admissions staff, for inviting me to speak to you about the Welcome Center. It is truly an honor. I am here today to talk about how the Welcome Center has had such a positive impact on this campus as well as prospective students and their families. This year, the school has received over 12,500 applications to become a first-year student which is a record number. SUNY New Paltz has the opportunity now to completely shape the student body due to the vast amount of applications. There are numerous reasons why this is a big number, but ultimately, the Welcome Center is a big part of it. We, as a staff, want to continually do our part to bring in as many qualified applicants as possible by being the front lines for the school. We give the first impression, and we never want to mess that up. That being said, a great first impression requires lots and lots of money. There are certain areas that need improving in order to make the Welcome Center the best it can be. But before we get into that, lets talk about the Welcome Center and its progression over the years.CLICKRight now, I am going to show you a snippet of our virtual tour, with the first stop being the Welcome Center. This will give our new admissions staff members a brief overview of our job and how essential it is have on campus.CLICKThe Welcome Center is located on the first floor of the Haggerty Administration Building, which is right next to our pride and joy, the Atrium. It was established in the early 2000s in order to alleviate stress in the various departments. It can definitely get annoying answering the same questions over and over again. Each day, our dedicated Greeters come in with smiling faces, ready to take on the day. We take on over 500 calls a day, ranging from basic calls asking for a department to complicated calls that may have us call multiple departments to find the right answer. Additionally, we greet walk-in visitors. These visitors can be students or faculty, but mostly we have prospective families come in. At the Welcome Center, we have racks filled with brochures as well as a giant computer tablet that can give a virtual tour of the campus. Prospective families feel comfortable asking our Greeters questions about the school because our Greeters are students themselves at the school. Overall, this Welcome Center is a great central hub for students, staff and visitors. It is such an essential asset to the New Paltz community because they give in-sight into our rather diverse college. I personally am always amazed that we have so many departments willing to help. Each shift, I learn about a new department and their functions for the college.I am proud to report that the Welcome Center has had no complaints over the past years. It goes to show that our positive and happy appearance is appealing to visitors and callers. This is a big component to the number of applicants we get each year.CLICKLike I said before, we are the first impression of the campus. That is why our supervisor, Shana Circe, hires the best students for the job. These students excel academically and have great communication skills as well as customer service skills. Additionally, they know how to deal with all types of people because they know how frustrating it is when your questions are not getting answered. The Greeters do their best to answer any and all questions before transferring a call or directing to a different department on campus. I like to say they are the warriors for the school, eliminating any enemies that might disrupt the peace of the school. During each shift, there are only two Greeters that are answering phone calls and greeting visitors. It is protocol for Greeters to ignore incoming calls if they are helping out with a visitor. Because of this, our school loses prospective students because their logic is that they cant even get a simple question answered. During the beginning and end of the semester, the Welcome Center becomes hectic. Also, when graduation rolls around, we are in charge of handing out all the tickets. Although these are basic responsibilities, Greeters have to juggle all these tasks at the same time. This is why I think we need to have a bigger staff. Currently, the school only allows 10 people at a time to be part of the Welcome Center staff. Because of these numerous responsibilities, it would be easier to add 5 to 6 people to the staff and have 4 people working at a time instead of 2. The efficiency of the Welcome Center will grow significantly if we were able to hire more people. Money is needed to pay for the extra workers, but it benefits the center in the long run, as you can see.CLICKAt the Welcome Center, greeters have various tools at their disposal in order to communicate with people, whether it is on the phone or in-person. There are grey phones with a giant switchboard of all the extensions of each department on campus. These range from student accounts to records and registration. Additionally, each call must be logged on the computer which happens to be a dell computer. Lastly, we have brochures displayed all over the Welcome Center about admission into the college as well as each academic school on campus. All of these tools are used to communicate efficiently and effectively with others. Unfortunately, the technology we use is getting older and older by the second. The phones are becoming extremely faulty and the computers randomly shut down during everyones shift. Also, the brochures get out-dated very quickly since requirements change frequently year to year. In order to keep up with appearances, we would need new equipment. While researching for customer service technology advancements, I stumbled upon these new phones and computers. By having these in the Welcome Center, we could find information online easier and visitors would be impressed that our school takes pride in advancement in all fields.CLICKThe Welcome Centers sole responsibility is to cater to visitors and callers. We do this by answering questions, providing information, and selling parking permits. While these are very important responsibilities, it unfortunately limits our potential as employees of the school. If we compare our responsibilities to those Greeters at SUNY Plattsburgh, our jobs here seems weak. Some of their responsibilities include selling stamps, selling movie tickets, managing mailboxes, and many other things. They also answer phones calls and greet walk-in visitors. If SUNY New Paltz were able to include the Welcome Center more in the admissions aspect of the school, the Welcome Center would have a guaranteed professional edge. Perhaps we could have access to application status in order to help those who are asking if they are missing any important paperwork to complete their application. Also,if we were able to sell the trailways bus tickets at the Welcome Center, we would take the burden off of student activities and more responsibilities would be given. Again, money is needed to improve this aspect of the Welcome Center. By adding on more responsibilities to the job, visitors will be more impressed of the high standard SUNY New Paltz upholds. CLICKLastly, I would like to propose the expansion of the Welcome Center. The simplistic nature of the center is definitely an asset when visitors come in. We want to keep that simplicity, but add more things in order to show visitors that we take pride in making people feel comfortable. Currently, we have tiny coffee kiosk with free coffee for visitors. If we could possibly expand that to make it a mini Starbucks, visitors will be impressed. Additionally, we have display cabinets in order to show our pride in different cultures on campus. If we were to expand and make a little museum at the Welcome Center, it would how eclectic our campus is while luring in prospective students. We could display little bits of New Paltz history, so visitors can be intrigued.CLICKThe SUNY New Paltz Welcome Center is a staple to the campus community. We are the first people prospective families see when they come visit the campus. We want to be part of their journey and make them feel as comfortable as possible. While we have an amazing role on campus, there is definitely more that we can do. I hope that you all will take my multiple proposals into consideration in hopes of building a better future for the Welcome Center and this campus. I know money is required to do many of these things, so please pass this along to anyone you feel is important and can see our dream. I also gave brochures to the student ambassadors to hand out to prospective families on tour. It is important for us to give off the best versions of ourselves, and the Welcome Center can definitely get a better version.