University Residences, in their continuing effort to provide higher levels of service and support to residents, is creating an online program for residents to sign-up to stayover during breaks.
For students living in Heritage, Landers, Barnum, Butler and Gentle – breaks like Thanksgiving Break, Christmas Break and Spring Break are not covered in their contract. It’s good and healthy (for us all) for them to go home for a week or 4. Anyway, for students who have to work, or who’s coaches require it, or who live … like in Japan – we do offer the option to stayover during the breaks. It does cost money, as it’s not included in the contract, but it’s better than nothing.
You might be asking – what about those folks in Arbor Park (Cedar, Noble, Spruce, Alder View)? Well the breaks are included in their contracts – so we ask that they signup, but there is no fee.
Anyway, we intend to release this program for residents to use coming a little before Spring Break. The program then records who is staying, and where they will be during the break (as students are often moved temporarily for the break). It will record billing, past breaks, etc… It is a real step in the right direction.
Now that we have 2 student programs like this (and a third on the way – Online Work Order System), I will be standardizing my PL/SQL mini-portal code. Summer and I made a huge leap in this direction by standardizing the Cookie Security Code. Now instead of anyone logging into a program directly, they log into the mini-portal – which gives them a cookie that works for all their systems. RA’s (Resident Assitants) have 4-5 programs, Residents will soon have 3, and the Housing Staff is going from 1 to 3 very soon.
I’m pretty excited about all of this because I’m dabbling in mini portal technology, using LDAP authentication and bringing programs and education all together.
It’s a win-win.