Behind the Scenes with the Office of Student Support and Outreach

Learn more about the Office of Student Support and Outreach, the impact of their care on student lives, and how their work sustains the student life cycle at the university.

Qu’ran Bell, director of Student Support and Outreach, Maria Vega, bilingual student success coordinator, and Taia Younis, student success coordinator, shed light on the inner workings of the office. Bell ’21, ’22, a two-time alumna of Empire State University, has been with the office for approximately four years; Vega joined the team a year and a half ago, and Younis slightly over two years ago.

How would you define what your office does for the university?

Bell: I always describe us as a student’s person. We take a holistic approach to working with students and their mentors to get them to graduation. We offer generalized support and non-academic help for all undergraduate students.

Younis: I think of us as filling in gaps for a student, whether it’s information they don’t have or a resource they don’t know exists. It depends on what the student needs, but we’re meeting them where they are, figuring out what their barriers are, and giving them resources and support so they can get past those and continue to be successful academically.

Vega: What I tell my students is that we are their personal navigators of the different systems and resources within the university, navigating processes or policy for the student, explaining it to them, and facilitating those conversations or that process.

What does a workday look like for you?

Younis: My day always starts with an assessment of where I’m at and what is on my plate. I’m a paper person, so every day, this list gets made and it includes my schedule, the students I have to connect with, and any other to-do items.

Because we are a team that is very involved with other things around the university, we get pulled into a lot of internal and external meetings. In between those … we’re mostly responding to student needs and concerns. If they have something that’s complex, we encourage them to meet by phone or virtually so we can have more of a robust discussion about it. We communicate all day long.

Vega: We’re also in a number of committees or task forces, have staff meetings, and sometimes, as colleagues in our team, if we have a complex case we’ll jump on a call and walk through how we can resolve that particular issue, or we have case resolution meetings. If a student has a grade appeal, grievance, or mentor reassignment, those cases come to us, and we facilitate the process by presenting it to the deans and department chairs.

Qu’ran and I were part of a National Student Parent Month event series that we do with the Office of Student Engagement and the Student Parent Collective affinity group. Taia and I are in another group, “Operations Pod,” which is collaborative and internal to our department—so there are all these other meetings to arrange among the other conversations and meetings we’re having with students.

Bell: It’s really just collaborating. This office, the coordinators, collaborate probably with more offices and divisions than any other department here. With faculty, and with other departments—we’re always doing engagement activities. A lot of our work overlaps with what others in the institution are doing.

Even the case resolutions that Maria talks about, it’s a way for us to work one-on-one with deans and department chairs to really help students. On the outside, it looks like tons of meetings, calls, but it is an effort to work collaboratively with other people within this institution to help students.

Vega: We also do programming. We have workshops every week—whether it’s during lunch hour or in the evening—on different topics. We have a first-term community group tailored to provide information for students who are coming in.

What is something you wish people knew about the work that you do?

Bell: As someone who leads the team, I wish people knew about what [the coordinators] do in general. This is a new position to the institution—when I started, it was a very new position—there were four coordinators at the time. We have expanded to 13, which is a testament to how much enrollment has grown in this university, and how much it is starting to see the need for student support teams. The [student success] coordinators are probably the most steady person that the student works with from the time they enter the institution to the time they graduate.

Younis: That we are ambassadors. And yes, we help students, but we help our staff and our faculty in taking care of students’ needs that would be on their plate if we didn’t step in. We’re doing that front line work, which is saving them a tremendous amount of time doing all of that communicating that students would do directly with them if they did not have this liaison to field that.

We have a strong impact on retention because students have somebody that cares, and half the time, that’s really all they need to know—that someone cares, that there is someone available if they need them.

What is an obstacle that you often coach students through?

Bell: Time management. That is the biggest thing. They are students with competing priorities—how do you make school work when you’re working? Or you’re a parent, a caregiver…

Vega: Asking for help. When [students] do end up asking for help, it’s really late sometimes, and then you’re trying to retroactively solve the problem. If a student asks to meet with me, we’ll discuss ‘what are some of your competing priorities right now?’ Those are factors that we cannot remove, so let’s find pockets within the time that you do have that we can turn into small wins. We are constantly adapting to the students that we’re serving, and no one approach fits all.

Younis: Sometimes students come into online [learning] thinking they are going to be able to complete it faster because it’s flexible, and they might have to adjust their goals and timeline. In online education, you have to create your own structure … a lot of the students who are successful are setting themselves up for success by building an academic routine that will get them through.

What is a valuable resource that you wish more students knew of?

Younis: We have a really robust, generous academic support service for students. They can work one-on-one with a learning coach once or twice a week at no additional cost. That, and not just our library, but our librarian staff. These are the people that are going to teach students who have never done online education how to be an online student, how to do research online.

Vega: Basic Needs is a group within our division that provides personal resources. If a student is struggling financially, we have some emergency grants that they manage. They are connected with different community resources. They are the ones who coordinate the Student Chromebook Pilot Initiative, and we also have a virtual pantry that they coordinate. They do more of that social work piece.

Bell: This group. Student Success coordinators are a hidden resource within the institution. You can find every single resource we been mentioning.

What is the most fulfilling part of your work?

Bell: I am proud of every one of the 13 coordinators that we have and the work that they do with students. It’s amazing to see the growth of this department—and that is from being a coordinator [myself] all the way up to leading the department.

I will, without hesitation, say that those [retention] numbers that continue to increase, this team has a big part in that. They are literally getting students across the finish line, and that is something to be proud of. We have great faculty and wonderful programs—I am a proud product of this institution. But the work that each of the coordinators does is so vital to the student lifecycle.

Younis: For me, it’s interactions with students. It’s that moment where a student says, ‘I feel so much better now.’

Vega: When that lightbulb goes off and it’s like ‘Oh, now I get it,’ or ‘I see what you mean, thank you for explaining that to me,’ we were able to make an impact for that one student. The other big piece, which is kind of what we all want to see our students do, is graduation.

I went to my first commencement this year … all the staff and faculty were on the sidelines, students were processing in between, and we were all clapping and cheering them along. It’s a good feeling that you played a role in that student getting there. It really does make the work worthwhile.