To assess the transition from summer months to the fall semester, campus recreation professionals should concentrate on tailoring their evaluations to two distinct groups: new and returning student participants who are adjusting to campus life and student staff members who are balancing dual roles as employees and as students during peak operations.
Meet students where they are
Every cohort of students and employees is different. Discover where students are in their wellbeing journeys, assess staff in their professional skills, and facilitate operational efficiencies using tips from the Wellbeing Briefing Work Team.
Tips for assessing student participants
- Map the “First Six Weeks” Friction Points: Capture peak usage hours during the early fall surge to assess facility crowding and equipment availability.
- Identify Summer-to-Fall Shifts in Habits: Survey students on how their workout preferences change. An example would be shifting from outdoor recreation in summer to indoor fitness classes in fall.
- Assess Belonging for New Students: Embed a short survey into late-September fitness challenges to measure if early facility use helped freshmen to build social connections.
- Correlate Welcoming Events with Retention: Track how many students who attended fall orientation rec-nights returned as regular users by October.
Tips for assessing student and professional staff
- Evaluate Pre-Semester Training Efficacy: Administer a quick baseline quiz or survey immediately after late-summer training to measure staff confidence in safety protocols and customer service.
- Measure Burnout During Peak Transition: Conduct quick pulse surveys or informal check-ins during week 3 to measure staff stress levels during the highest-volume operational weeks.
- Track Operational Friction Points: Document shift reports during the first month to identify where staff face the most customer confusion, scheduling conflicts, or facility bottlenecks.
- Assess Peer-to-Peer Training Dynamics: Interview returning student supervisors to evaluate how effectively they are onboarding new fall hires compared to the quieter summer months.
Keep learning
If you’ve worked in campus recreation for any length of time, you probably already know the “first year of university is a challenging period of academic and personal development for students.”
The tips above are a good starting point; but if you’re looking for more “valuable insight into students’ perceptions of adapting to learning in a university environment,” check out the four themes that emerge arounds student efforts to become effective learning in a university context in the 2020 article: “‘It’s been a challenge finding new ways to learn’: first-year students’ perceptions of adapting to learning in a university environment.”
- If you have questions how to ensure the Wellbeing Briefing reaches your inbox, please contact NIRSA Editorial and Communications Director Simon Bravo.
