Four Stores Share Their EA Expeditions

One community college store has dipped its toes into inclusive access and is looking ahead to equitable access. A university bookstore has built a robust IA program and is now considering how to convert to EA. Another university store is finally launching its EA program this fall, while a fourth store already has several terms of EA under its belt.

All four campus stores described their journeys with inclusive and equitable access and what they learned along the way in the CAMEX100 educational session, Equitable Access: Tales from the Road, moderated by Jared Pearlman, chief strategy officer, VitalSource.

Although they are at different points in their journeys, all four had very similar advice for other stores contemplating whether and how to get started.

The Joliet Junior College Bookstore, Joliet, IL, is “organically working toward” inclusive access for more courses, but anticipates shifting to EA at some point, said Helen Nakos, manager of the store and auxiliary support services. “With IA, we think about the pillars of affordability and access, but as we look toward EA, we really look at student success and retention,” she said.

The University of Dayton Bookstore, Dayton, OH, is “past the beginning stages” of IA, with 1,100 courses already part of the program, according to Julie Banks, director. Transitioning to IA was easier in one respect: the store had already adopted a digital strategy during the pandemic and stood at close to 70% digital for the spring term.

“We sunset our rental program at that time (pandemic) and I don’t regret it for a moment,” Banks said. However, complicating a move to EA is that 90% of the student body already receives a $500 scholarship for course materials from the university.

The CU Book Store, University of Colorado Boulder, is launching its EA program this fall, after working on it for four or five years, according to Jessica Carlsen, director. The store had had a successful IA program for some time, with about half of its courses in the program as of CAMEX100. “After COVID, we never went back to opening up the textbook floor. We’ve always had counter service since COVID,” she said.

The Cornell Store, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, now has about a year’s experience with EA, debuting the program in fall 2022 after a “pretty robust” IA program for a number of years, said Michael Ramsey, manager of retail technology buying and consumer technology programs. The change came about, in part, by students’ desire for more predictability in course materials costs.

The school also didn’t want students picking classes based on cost. “The administration really wanted all courses to have a similar level of engagement,” he added.

The panelists pointed to data-crunching and especially building campus relationships as critical to the success of their IA programs and evolution into EA.

The CU Book Store partnered with the institution’s office of data analytics, supplying information on which courses were involved, what materials used, and other data each semester. The office would look at how IA courses correlated with retention and graduation rates. The purpose was to show, “in talking with campus leadership, that this is having a positive effect on student success,” Carlsen said.

The data was also shared (in a confidential format) with a master’s program class to provide hands-on experience in developing modeling.

Survey data—from faculty at Cornell and from students at Joliet—helped those stores tweak IA programs and make improvements. “Really what we noticed,” Nakos said, “was we were going from top down to where IA really was ground up.”

“Know your data and be comfortable in sharing,” suggested Banks. “Look back to 2017” for comparisons.

Working with campus departments, though, was key.

“We talked to literally everybody on campus, every single department,” Ramsey said. At first he had a list of just five or six that he thought were crucial for outreach, but that list soon swelled to 100.

“Early on, we got the library on board. They have been so willing to assist,” he added. “We got the provost’s office on board so he could deflect some of the faculty who might be against. Folks we never thought would be willing to take risks with this, getting buy-in from every single department on campus … we wanted to really sell it as a university program.”

Carlsen followed a similar path. “I went into my office and shut the door, and made a list of all the departments I thought I’d need to talk to, then prioritized the list,” she said. She has 12 versions of the presentation, each geared to the type of needs for the department she’s meeting with.

“Now we’re up to campus leadership, 20 more meetings,” she said. “Socializing on campus is all I do now.”

The library was also an important ally. Two years ago, Carlsen joined a couple of the library’s subcommittees, which enabled her to learn more about their operations “and showed the dean I was really interested in their business model.” She started sharing the store’s booklist with the library to check for adopted titles that were already in the collection. Where possible, they also linked directly to the library. “We listened to their needs and concerns and partnering with them was natural for us,” she said.

During the pandemic, the Cornel library encountered difficulties in serving students with print and began reaching out to publishers for digital solutions, Ramsey said. However, it turned out to be too costly for the library. So when the store approached them with the digital IA and EA programs, they were excited to support them.

In determining the EA fee, Carlsen enlisted an actuarial firm, the store’s digital partners, and an internal term to work on the financial modeling and compared what they came up with. Cornel also “did our due diligence,” Ramsey said, “and when we brought that number to campus, they were like ‘That’s it?’” His store is now exploring a potential upgrade, where students pay a little more to gain extras, such as a device or supplies.

Relationship-building can take some time. At first CU campus leaders said no to any program. The digital-first aspect was especially worrisome to faculty.

“I took digital out of the presentation,” Carlsen said, “and I just tell them I’ll get materials that are best for students and best for you to teach with.” If a professor is adamant about print, she’ll order print but otherwise all titles are digital.

“We’re firm but flexible,” Ramsey said. When a faculty member requests print, the store will stock both print and digital. “We’ll see how students like it and have another conversation after about transitioning to digital,” he said. Departmental peer pressure also comes into play; departments prefer that materials be the same across sections.

Banks has found that some adopted titles don’t have a digital version, which means the store still has to deal with some print books and coursepacks. “As we move toward EA, we’re telling faculty we’re going to provide all your course materials, the technology we’re using is still the same,” she said.

There are some other changes that campus stores need to deal with when it comes to IA and EA. Email, for one.

“My email since the pandemic has skyrocketed,” Nakos said. Faculty, staff, students, and students’ families all have questions about IA and what they’re supposed to do. For fall rush, she created a digital log-in bar with a café table and tall stools where students could get help logging into their accounts for the first time. She also asked vendor partners to be on hand to assist at rush.

Banks, too, said she was spending a lot more time answering email questions, so she set up a blog on the store’s website with Frequently Asked Questions and critical information. She could easily link to the blog in responses.

The CU Book Store used to employ 100 temporary student workers during rush, with 40 registers. Now Carlsen has half as many temps and doesn’t need as many registers. The extra checkouts are now used to show students—with help from the temps—how to log into the learning management system and find their course materials.

“We’re doing more customer service than anything,” she said.

Rush will also be different in many ways.

“Completely different,” Ramsey said. “You have to redesign everything about rush.” He also admits to handling a ton of email queries, and needs to budget time for that. But after implementing EA, “it changed the psychological makeup of rush,” he said. “Those were the first rushes of my life not filled with anxiety.” Students were excited about picking up their books and parents weren’t stressed about shopping for course materials.

General merchandise now fills the space formerly occupied by textbooks at The Cornell Store. Most of the extra space at the CU Book Store has been repurposed into a web order pickup zone.

Overall rush traffic tends to be down, however, and stores will need to find ways to get students in the door. “We’re going to focus more on marketing for other items we carry and enhance the welcome experience for everyone,” Ramsey said.

Watch for the September/October issue of The College Store magazine for more about IA and EA launches at seven other college stores.