Managing the "Start-of-Term" Surge

Every leader at a rural community college knows the feeling of the first week of the semester. It’s a mix of excitement and absolute exhaustion. During my time as a Dean at Northeastern Junior College, I saw this firsthand in the Financial Aid office.

With a dedicated but small staff of just 2.5 people, we were drowning. We had a line of students out the door and a phone system that wouldn't stop ringing.

The "Voicemail Loop" Crisis

Besides the challenge of the volume, it was also the repetition. When a student left a voicemail and didn’t hear back within two hours, they’d call again. Then again. One student might leave three voicemails in a single morning. This created a backlog that was impossible to clear while simultaneously serving the students standing right in front of us. In addition, many voicemails had incomplete information leaving us guessing at who it was that left the message.

We realized that in trying to serve everyone everywhere, we were effectively serving no one well.

The Strategy: Transparency and Triage

To fix this, we stopped trying to hide the struggle and started managing expectations. We made two pivotal changes:

1. Direct Communication: We updated our voicemail to be brutally honest. We informed callers that for the first week of the semester, we were prioritizing in-person service and would not be returning voicemails. If they needed immediate help, they had to come to the office. This immediately broke the "voicemail loop."

   
   

2. The "Triage" Model: We borrowed help from the Recruitment team, who were less

   busy at the very start of the semester. A recruiter worked the line to screen needs. We discovered that some students didn't need a 20-minute meeting; they just needed to drop off a scholarship check or a single form. By pulling those students out of line early, we cut wait times for everyone.

   
   

Moving Toward Scalable Solutions

As a supervisor, it’s easy for a "shared" inbox or phone number to become "no one's" responsibility. To move beyond manual triage, we’ve shifted toward better systems:

• Systemic Guardrails: We are implementing ConexEd, which improves automation and our ability to help many students before they require one of one help from a staff member. For advising, it requires students to be admitted and have a student ID before booking an advisor. This ensures advisors spend their time on advising, not basic troubleshooting.

  
  

• Defining "Advising Ready": We are in the process of having our Outreach Team, CRM communication journeys, and video onboarding take the lead on getting students "Advising Ready." This ensures that by the time a student sits down with a specialist, the groundwork is already laid.

Many times, we transfer a student 3-4 times before we get them to the right place and we hope we can get students to the right place the first time and get them the right answer the first time they ask.

The Future: AI as the Ultimate Triage

I’m currently searching for the next evolution: AI tools that integrate directly with our Student Information System (SIS). While most AI demos focus on the "flashy" recruitment side—where the bigger marketing budgets live—the real need in rural colleges is on the onboarding and retention side. We need tools that can:

• Provide personalized "nudges" based on a student's specific file.

• Answer "Where is my paperwork?" or "What do I need to submit and how do I submit it?" in real-time, 24/7.

• Complete processes before the student feels the need to call or visit.

  
  

If you've found a technology tool that is moving in this direction, let me know.