sattelite center

["Sara Sobota" <sobota@coastal.edu>]

Hello all,

I wanted to throw in my two cents in response to Jane's inquiry.  We 
began a satellite center last year; it's located in a new freshman 
dorm that opened last fall as well.  We operated two evenings a week 
for 3 hours at a time, so it was a pretty part-time (and somewhat 
experimental) operation -- I staffed it with experienced 
undergraduate consultants.  Like Sara's, our satellite center 
suffered from low usage, I think because of two reasons:  
insufficient support from the residence life people and insufficient 
advertising.  The students who did visit the dorm reported that they 
appreciated the convenience of the site, so we are going to try it 
again this year -- I plan to kick it off with an open house early in 
the semester, in which we'll have several consultants available to talk with 
the students (I'm also contemplating bribery, with free pizza) and 
let them know when we'll be available.  Also, there's been a turnover 
in residence life staff, so I'm hoping we won't have the last-minute 
scheduling conflicts and other logistical problems that kept cropping 
up last year.  Sorry the post is so long -- hope it helps.

Sara Sobota
sobota@coastal.edu