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.
Getting on-time course material adoptions can be a challenge. Your store probably shares the reasons why course material adoption deadlines matter (lower costs, better buyback prices, fewer out of stock books, etc.), but still sometimes the adoptions just aren’t submitted. When you have reached out to faculty multiple times, what is your next course of action? Use your store’s data to illustrate the importance of on-time adoptions.
Building strong channels of communication with faculty can help campus stores in a variety of ways: on-time adoptions, more faculty members recommending students get their materials from the campus store and a better understanding of the important services the store provides the community. How can your campus store strengthen its faculty relationships and improve communication?
On-schedule faculty adoptions can have a big impact on your campus. Whether the adoptions are early, on-time, late or change at the last minute, they affect everything from students and store staff to retention rates. That’s why it is important to develop a good, reliable process for communicating with faculty about adoptions.
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.
You already know that timely faculty adoptions are important in a variety of ways. When adoption deadlines are met, your store has more time to find low-cost course materials, you can purchase more books during buyback, you can avoid backorders, etc. However, faculty see course material adoptions through a different lens, so it is important to remind faculty why adoption deadlines exist and how they impact students.
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.
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