Ideas, information and industry news for collegiate retailers

Whether they know it or not, the faculty members at your school play a crucial role in the success of your business. By implementing a few savvy strategies, you can encourage helpful feedback, establish a routine of prompt adoptions and inspire devoted on-campus ambassadors.

When faculty members submit their adoptions on time (or early), your students have more opportunities to save when they purchase their course materials the following term. To make it easier for you to communicate the important role your faculty play in the price of textbooks, we've rounded up a selection of the free resources we've created over the past couple of years. Browse the materials below and simply click on each image to download each item or set.

The symbiotic relationship between a store and its school’s faculty is extremely important. You are reliant on one another to get things done, and in order to have all of your course materials ready for your students at the beginning of each term, you have to work together. But how faculty views the store may differ from how the store views itself, and those discrepancies could keep you from maintaining as efficient a relationship as you might like.

Instead of sending out the same emails to faculty that they use every year, Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., has chosen to go a different route. Last summer, they decided to create and distribute about 350 “Focus on Faculty” folders in an effort to educate their professors on the role they play in the success of the bookstore. And after last year’s folders went over well, Book Manager Hannah Wallace decided to distribute them again this fall.

Are you in the Faculty Center Network?

If you work in a bookstore, you know how important it is to get your adoptions in early, but your faculty might not. With that in mind, we've outlined a few scenarios below to help guide your faculty through the adoption process. Show them the benefits of gettings the lists in earlier, as well as the consequences of a delayed or last-minute submission. Just make sure you keep them on the straight and narrow!

Faculty adoptions can be a historic pain point for college bookstore operators. Whether courses and instructors aren’t finalized in time for the bookstore's deadline or they’re just plain busy, faculty seem to wait until or after the last minute — or later — to turn in their adoption lists for the upcoming term.

If you missed out on yesterday's faculty relations webinar, don't worry. We've got the full presentation here ready for you to view at your convenience. Let us know what you think, and remember to join us live at 11 a.m. each of the next three Wednesdays as we continue our Bookstores without Barriers series.

Educate

Adoptions may seem like a simple task to your store, but for a faculty member who spends their time focused on classwork and grading, that may not be the case. The best way to help them understand the importance of their course material decisions is to explain it in a way that they can understand. That’s easier said than done, however, when you have a full to-do list. So we’re here to help with several new flyers you can use to spread the word about the significance of early adoptions, the choosing of low-cost course materials and the promoting of the campus bookstore as a viable shopping option to students. Many of them are customizable, so you can add in personalized instructions based on your store’s process! Download them now to see for yourself!

The best way to get students to buy textbooks in your store is to ensure that you have competitively priced titles. But, in order to achieve that goal, your store needs to receive timely adoptions from faculty members, so you can pursue the most cost effective options early. As a result, many stores are looking at new ways to communicate with their faculty about this important topic, and The University Store at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Georgia happens to be one of them.