UB relaunches HUB Student Center

HUB Student Center, the primary system for student information and transactions at UB, has been revamped to deliver a redesigned, mobile-friendly and intuitive experience to students.

The administrative core for every UB student’s academic life, HUB Student Center serves as a “home base” for everything the university does from a student services perspective.

The transformative upgrade was driven by a collaboration between the vice provost for enrollment management and the chief information officer.

“Once a student is admitted to UB, they turn to HUB Student Center, where they can receive financial aid, pay bills, register for classes and much more,” says Kara Saunders, university registrar. “There are tools in HUB that enable each student to answer the question, ‘What do I need to take in order to get my degree?’

“Through HUB Student Center, students also receive and view grades, and measure their progress. The Registrar’s Office then uses the other end of those tools to make sure each student meets all of the requirements so we can confer their degree,” she says.

HUB allows faculty to enter grades through the system. Students can add and drop classes, request transcripts and apply for graduation.

“We schedule classes and provide all that is necessary to support those main activities,” Saunders says.

“If you were a college or university student 40 or 50 years ago,” says Craig MacVittie, manager for application development, Enterprise Application Systems, “you always had to visit an office for those types of services. Whether signing up for classes or receiving financial aid, whatever particular service you required would be done for you.”

MacVittie explains that over the years, UB has moved to a more self-service-directed system.

“The model has two components,” he says. “Back-office — administrative support — and self-service, where students interact with the system on their own. The newly completed upgrade to HUB Student Center is focused on the self-service portion of the system.

“It is probably 10% of the functionality of the HUB, and 90% of the transactions are in it.”

Saunders says HUB Student Center has looked almost exactly the same since UB went live with HUB in 2011.

“Even before we did that, Oracle — which provides the software that underlies HUB — had not updated that product, I believe, for about 10 or 15 years,” she says.

This is a much-needed project that has been in the works for months, Saunders adds.

“The upgrade was made possible through the vision, skill and effort of many members of the UB community from across the university. We want to celebrate their hard work in making this a success,” she says.

“Clearly, the HUB Student Center that people were using didn’t look or feel modern,” MacVittie says. “It was difficult to navigate and find what you were looking for, and even more difficult to access by cellular phones.

“And yet, 34% of student HUB access on opening day this year was made from mobile devices,” he notes.

“We wanted to give our students a much different — and much better — experience.  This upgrade will do that.”

Saunders says mobile-friendly “is really the primary driver. But what’s nice about accomplishing that is at the same time we are also making it even more user-friendly on your tablet, laptop or desktop computer.”

With the upgrade, HUB Student Center is now a responsive design based on screen size, says Joe Rizzo, assistant director of HUB and student systems support.

“If you come into it on your phone, it is one size; a tablet looks a little different and a desktop is an even better experience,” Rizzo says.

“The old model was not intuitive. Students told us they kind of clicked around and figured it out on their own. Now, when you first log in, you are presented with seven clearly labeled tiles. The before and after is pretty compelling.

“If students want to add or drop a class, they click on ‘Manage Classes.’ If they want to pay their bill, they click on ‘Billing/Payments.’ There is no mystery about it,” Rizzo adds.

“A highlight of why we did the project was that we wanted a lot of student input as we went through each of the design stages,” Saunders says.

“When we started getting comments, ideas and insights from students, the first thing we did was to have students use HUB Student Center as it existed. We asked them to tell us, ‘What do they like about it? What do they not like? What’s working?’”

Drew Colosimo, Enterprise Applications Systems technical lead, says the team asked students to try to find certain things, and it very quickly became apparent that the original format was not the best experience.

“Difficulty paying their bill stood out,” Colosimo says. “Most students had trouble figuring out where to go within the system to actually get this done.

“We focused on getting feedback on the classic student center — which is how the project referred to the original design — so when we solicited student input on the new system as we were developing it, we made sure not to introduce or carry over any of these types of issues,” he says.

Crystal Young, a second-year student in the master’s degree program in mechanical engineering, was among those students who participated in focus groups for the HUB upgrade.

“In the one year I have been using the system,” Young says, “the thing I found most bothersome was the dropdown tree menus.

“So, conversely, my favorite part of the new system is the tiles. Now all you have to do is pick the area that you are looking for, click it, and all of the menus are right there for you. It makes a big difference and saves time,” she says.

Anita Lin, a third-year student majoring in architecture, also participated in the focus groups.

“The new version of the HUB is really better organized,” Lin says. “I feel much more engaged with it. It is very accessible, as opposed to the old version, which was so often hard to figure out.”

Juliette Mensah, a fourth-year biomedical sciences major, agrees. “You really had to search to find things, especially financial aid. I work in 1Capen, and we have had so many students making a special trip over here just to get their financial aid done because of the old HUB system. Now you just click on the tile.”

“We are going to continue soliciting student feedback, conduct an ongoing review of functionality and update as needed,” MacVittie says. “Even though we have gone live with this, it is not viewed as finished or completed.

“The new design allows us to continue changing and improving the user experience much more easily and consistently — something that is important to everyone across the university who worked on this project,” he says.

Saunders notes the user interface is the main change. “But along with it, we have added new functionality to the system,” she says. “For example, people have been saying for years we should have better contact information for our students, such as an emergency contact address, cell phone number, email and those types of things.

“In the old version of HUB Student Center, it was very difficult for us to create opportunities for students to make sure they were regularly reviewing and providing the university with all of that information.

“This upgraded version that we are moving toward gives us the ability to ask for that on a semester-by-semester basis, to make sure students are looking at that, verifying it and updating whatever needs to be updated,” she adds.

“With the upgrade, the process for doing that will become easier and more intuitive.”