Team Information
Jessica Godo, jessica.godo@ucdenver.edu, Operations & Events Senior Coordinator
Sarah Trzeciak, sarah.trzeciak@ucdenver.edu, Student Services Director
Who
Meghan Mitchell, Student Asst II
Leah Fitzgerald, Digital Communications Manager
What
LynxConnect (Career Center, Experiential Learning Center, Study Abroad, and Undergraduate Research) created the Virtual Front Desk (VFD) in order to connect with visitors quickly and efficiently in an online format. We also created virtual drop-in hours for students to meet with a Peer Advisor for 30 minutes regarding any of our four offices' services, created a virtual toolkit, and created canvas courses for our internship workshop and job search studio. The benefits of these digital offerings are that students are able to connect with us for assistance on any of our services. We have assisted students who are in different states and countries, in which they would not have this type of service support without the digital options. The VFD has been essential to our customer service and community engagement. We utilized the resources already available to us on campus to make these digital services happen, which resulted in major cost and time savings for our offices.
Why
The VFD came as an immediate response to the pandemic, when our physical offices were closed to in-person services. We view our services as essential to the student experience, so the ability to quickly create, implement, and staff our virtual front desk was of highest priority. With the VFD, we have been able to continue giving our students support.
When
The Virtual Front Desk was created in April 2020, with full implementation by May 2020. The virtual drop-in hours and internship workshops with our Peer Advisors were created in March 2020, which was an easy transition for our staff to implement as we previously offered virtual drop-in and virtual internship workshops as a service option before the pandemic. The virtual toolkit and Canvas courses were created and implemented for the Summer 2020 semester. By Fall 2020, everything was fully up and running for LynxConnect.
