Campus store and faculty want to do what’s best for students. Despite the shared goal, there are often challenges when it comes to course material adoptions. Both groups are busy, each face their own deadlines and the store’s timeline for faculty adoptions may not always match with faculty’s preferred timeline. Strengthen your campus store’s faculty communication to improve student affordability and options.
The campus store knows the importance of early adoptions and why adoption deadlines matter to the store and the students. It’s critical to start and continue conversations with faculty about the benefits of selecting course materials for the next term on-time.
As you know, getting on-time course material adoptions is very important for college stores. However, it is also a topic where faculty and stores might not see eye to eye. Faculty often ask why adoption deadlines are so early. Here are five reasons you can share with faculty about why faculty adoptions deadlines are important.
The most important aspect of getting on-time adoptions is a stellar faculty communication plan. Recently, we sat down with Pennsylvania College of Technology’s Textbook Manager Kim Ergott to discuss how her store works with faculty to ensure on-time adoptions and lower student costs.
Early adoptions can help stores lower costs and increase the buyback value on readopted textbooks for students. So, how can the college store encourage more on-time adoptions? Peninsula College Bookstore has the answer: work with the deans.
Adjunct and part-time faculty make great evangelists for a campus store, because they are responsible for much of the undergraduate teaching on U.S. campuses. A temp-friendly faculty sale event is a fun way to win loyal customers and increase your campus profile.
Topics: faculty, adoptions, communicating with faculty
Your campus store's business health, adoption rate and value to students depend on increased faculty engagement. For that reason, you must be strategic about writing campus store emails to faculty. It’s essential to invest time and energy in developing an interconnected set of emails that increase engagement. If effective, a powerful message entices readers to open your emails and do what you ask them to do.
When you’re planning how you’ll reach faculty, it’s essential to start with a question: What do faculty really need to know?
As spring rolls in, course material adoptions come back to the forefront of concerns. Finding ways to communicate the importance of early adoptions to faculty can be a challenge. Are you doing enough? Are you doing too much? Students, faculty and college stores benefit from working together. Finding that happy medium where the faculty is informed enough to understand the importance to the student and the store, but does not feel harassed about the subject requires finesse. Here are four best practices when building professional relationships that will create a lasting rapport.
When faculty adopt low-cost digital options like inclusive access or alternative content, it serves the bookstore. Even if it doesn’t boost overall revenues, students are more likely to purchase the lower-priced texts on time. When students have required materials, their grades improve, retention increases and administrators more readily recognize the campus store’s fundamental place in the academic community. There’s only one problem: too many faculty members aren’t aware of digital options. That places the onus on bookstore associates to educate teachers.
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