It took junior Kim Hodgman two campus stops to get the International Student Identity Card she needed to spend this fall semester in Florence, Italy.
She had to find a very specifically sized mug shot of herself. She had to pay a $22 fee at the bursar's office and collect her receipt. Then she had to go to another Duke office to finally get the card.
"I went over once and I wasn't able to get it because I hadn't gotten the receipt yet," Hodgman said. "It's kind of ridiculous."
When a new Student Service Center opens on the first floor of the Allen Building in August, administrators hope that process--and many others--will involve fewer stops.
The goal of the SSC is to place many of the services students, faculty and staff regularly use in a single, central location. Currently, those services are scattered across West Campus and along Campus Drive.
"If you're a student who wants to get a parking pass, pay your telephone bill, cash a check and register for a class, why do you have to go to four different places?" Executive Vice President Tallman Trask asked. "Why is it somebody can't take your money and give you a parking pass?"
The service center combines aspects of the registrar's, bursar's, financial aid and student loan offices. Staff at the center, who were selected from those offices, will be trained to answer questions about student accounts, loans and registration. The center will distribute and collect many campus forms, and students will be able to pay bursar bills, pick up reimbursement checks and get international identity cards.
"If you've got errands to run on campus right now, you've got to spend a good amount of your day going from one office to another office, and for some people it might be confusing," said Pasha Majdi, president of Duke Student Government. "This is one-stop shopping."
In order to make way for the center, the bursar's office will move from its current location in the Allen Building to office space on Broad Street. Administrators reassured students that only the back room of the office was moving and every bursar service function would be accessible from the SSC.
Some of the services at the center, however, will not cover all student needs.
"They're going to answer boilerplate questions, just very general questions related to financial aid," said James Belvin, director of financial aid. "But they won't be working with counseling or determination."
Students will be able to sign some student loan checks at the office, but for most aid issues students will still need to make the trek to the Office of Financial Aid in middle of Campus Drive.
The current center offerings are just the bare-bones beginning, administrators said. Other services, such as DukeCard replacement, parking permits and transcript copies may soon be incorporated into the center as well.
"When we looked at what we could reasonably get in place by August, that wasn't possible, but it was certainly on the list," said Deborah Johnson, director of student administrative services. "To be successful, we really need to be receptive to what students want."
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