The Center for Transforming Student Services helps institutions of higher education use technology to develop improved student services. Membership in CENTSS provides unique access to strategies and knowledge building designed to help you blend the power of technology with the personal attention of traditional support services.

CENTSS offers members the following advantages:

• CENTSS builds awareness about the needs of all students for access to support services. Studies show that student services such as academic advising, counseling, tutoring, financial aid, and library services are essential to student success and retention. Yet, approximately half a million students studying online at U.S. colleges and universities lack access to the full array of student services available to campus-based students.
  
• CENTSS fosters the development of new integrated services designed from the student’s point of view. Historically, student services have operated independently from one another with separate policies, processes, and infrastructures. Students have been the "live integrators" going from one office to another as they moved through the system, often receiving confusing and conflicting advice along the way. CENTSS encourages newly imagined services, integrated by technology to better serve the student with a unified institutional voice.
  
• CENTSS helps institutions redesign services to better address the needs of today’s student population. Today’s student population is much more diverse. The average undergraduate is older, may come from any socio-economic class, and may have a wide range of learning and physical abilities. The new "Web-generation" is beginning to arrive, many of them working part-time and, like older students, expecting their classes and services to be available to fit into their schedules. CENTSS promotes models that feature customized individual service to meet the needs of this population.
  
• CENTSS helps the field establish benchmarks for effective electronic student services. It is essential that institutions provide the best quality service possible. But what is good quality service in this emerging field? CENTSS will publish the data collected by institutions on the outcomes achieved by new technology-enabled services.
  
• CENTSS helps institutions unite their services for on- and off-campus students. The personalized and customized online services students increasingly expect must be built upon a robust student information system that supports all students—both on and off campus. Many campuses currently use separate systems, even though nearly 80% of their online learners live on campus. CENTSS helps member institutions learn about new models of technology-enabled services that meet the needs of both populations, eliminating the confusion, and redundancy of duplicate services.
  
• CENTSS saves institutions time and effort in designing new services. Most institutions recognize that they must automate their operations to survive in an era of declining budgets and staff downsizing. Rather than reinventing the wheel or spending weeks researching what other institutions are doing, campuses can look to CENTSS’ one-stop resource site for information, models of best practice, and lessons learned at institutions pioneering new electronic student services.
  
• CENTSS provides institutions with the external expertise they need. Although a few institutions have the expertise to develop new electronic services in-house, most need external expertise at some point in the process. CENTSS provides member institutions with direct assistance and make recommendations to other institutions upon request.
  
• CENTSS helps identify models of electronic services best offered by the individual institution and those better provided by consortia. Traditionally, each institution has offered its own student services out of necessity because there have not been any alternatives. Now the Web offers ways to pool resources with other institutions to offer more cost effective, scalable and better quality joint services in selected areas. CENTSS helps member institutions embrace the ideas and models behind successful shared services.
  
• CENTSS provides institutions with information about outsourcing options. Increasingly institutions will consider outsourcing selected student services as technology makes it more cost-effective to do so. CENTSS identifies the issues around the use of outside contractors and publish case studies to help member institutions determine the options most appropriate for their consideration.
  
• CENTSS highlights the needs for new software to support student service functions or for improvements to existing software. By working closely with member institutions as they develop new services and by researching efforts by other institutions involved in similar efforts, CENTSS reports on the aggregated software needs of these institutions. Software vendors can use this information to respond more quickly to the market.

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