UA News

Windows receives up to 100 inquiries a day from students, parents and community members.

Name
Ryan Windows

Position
Program Coordinator/UA Facilitator, Dean of Students Office

Number of years at the UA
16

Favorite part about working at the UA
"The people. The students. Contact with that group keeps you young and hip and in the slang and in the music. More than anything, it's rewarding to help."

---

Ryan Windows is appropriately named. With his finger on the pulse of all things University of Arizona – from financial aid forms to groundbreaking research – the UA facilitator provides a broad "window" into life at the University through the Ask Us program.

When a student, parent or community member has a question about the UA, it often comes across Windows' desk. A campus detective of sorts, he's the man who responds to inquiries submitted through the UA's main Web site on everything from UA history to current campus events.

Windows spends hours researching the answers to questions from students, parents and community members. He also acts as an advocate for students, helping them through sticky situations like course scheduling snags or disputes with professors.

With a large network of support across campus, the jovial Windows is a well-known friendly face on the UA campus. He recently sat down with Lo Que Pasa to talk about his work helping people navigate the red and blue waters of the UA.

Is this the only job you've had at the UA? 

I actually started at Parking & Transportation. I was the Second Street garage cashier for about 2 1/2 years, moved to the Bursar's Office, did that for about 2 1/2 years, so that's my background in cashiering in customer service. Then this program grew out of the SIS 2000 team, which was the University's first attempt at reengineering student information systems. ... They created the concept of a knowledge worker, of a generalist, who would be able to be sort of a one-stop-shop for students and be the bureaucracy navigator for people who didn't know the University. The program started with 2 1/2 people ... and in one of the great budget cuts of previous years – I think it was the early 2000s – we lost half an FTE (full-time equivalent position) and then my one co-worker left for a different job, so the Ask Us program is now the "ask me" program.

What is the Ask Us program?

It's grown into any number of things. It's a very nebulous job. The primary function of the program is to aid student retention and acclimation by being a friendly first point of contact for folks, and I still do that. That's still my primary role, but as we moved out onto the Web and branded ourselves as the Ask Us program on the Web, what happened is we began to get very odd questions about the University from everybody. ... I've sort of grown into the "I don't know what to do with that, give it to Ryan Windows" person. So I get all of the really unusual, odd things that come off The University of Arizona main (Web) page. 

What are some of the most unusual questions you've gotten?

I had somebody several years ago, a community member, who wrote me and said that she understood that we have practice doctors here and that she needed some surgery. So she wanted to submit herself as a patient for free surgery so that she could have some plastic surgery done. Her dog also needed some surgery done, because it had a congenital defect and she didn't have enough money to have it done, so she wanted or veterinary school, which we don't have, to do practice surgery on her dog.

You also do dispute resolution?

I've really grown into dispute resolution and a little bit of social work. I do some casework in situations where a bad thing has happened to a student. The deans do the immediate crisis intervention, but very often I'll handle the back end things, pulling all the levers to get tuition taken off accounts or to get financial aid refunded or to do a withdrawal to get the student out so they can go home and not have to worry about doing all those things if they've had, say, a parent or sibling die or anything like that. ... When we have a student who dies I liaise with the family to help the family close down the student's University business. So it's a little bit of everything.

You must know a lot about what goes on at the UA.

I'm the jack-of-all-trades and master of none. I know this much stuff (Windows holds his fingers close together) about this much stuff (he spreads his arms wide), and I have a very good, well-developed network of experts who support me. The program is designed to try to catch bad information, so when you send me e-mail (to the UA Facilitator address, facil@listserv.arizona.edu) it goes out to a Listserv and about 40 different people look at that e-mail, and they're all experts in their respective fields here on campus. There are advisers, financial aid counselors, bursar folks on there, a couple of the people from the Dean of Students Office. And when I answer a question, I rely on their expertise. ... Any of those folks are free to respond if they wish, and if they don't, then they watch my responses, and I get feedback on my responses. So there are built-in safeguards. Even though I'm a one-man show I have a lot of support from the campus.

How do you keep up with changes on campus?

Right now I don't; I've just given up. As I need to find things, I go dig them up, but once the transition stabilizes in Student Affairs and across the institution, I'll do my best to familiarize myself with the chains of command again once they stop being in flux. But e-mail is my friend. I'm on about 74 Listservs. I get about, conservatively, 300 or 400 e-mails a day, and I don't read all those; it's not humanly possible. But they all go into my e-mail archive, which I use as a knowledge base. Then when I'm asked a question ... I go into the e-mail archive and I search for key words. If I can't find it in my e-mail archive, we go out to a Web search, broaden it out ... so a great deal of my job is parsing information and knowing how to retrieve information, because I couldn't possibly keep up with everything that goes on around here.

You must know a lot of folks on campus.

I have to allow at least 30 minutes to get to meetings. ... I'm a bit of a chatterbox. As a matter of fact, my boss told me one time, a long time ago, "You know, you wouldn't spend so many hours here at the University if you weren't quite such a social butterfly." And I said, "That's true – guilty. But I will submit to you that maintaining good social networks is part of what I do around here." Because when I need to call somebody and ask for a favor I don't have to explain who I am, what I do, all that stuff because they know.

What's the largest group you get questions from?
It's definitely prospective students and students. And then parents and then community members.

How many inquiries do you get in a day?
It depends on the time of year. During opening of school it can be 70, 100, but I run very much the student cycle, so in the middle of the semester it slows down to maybe 20, 30 a day and they're usually pretty routine.

How long does it take you to respond?
Generally I try to get back to voice mail (the) same business day, and I try to get back to e-mail within 24 hours of being asked, even if it's just, "I'm researching ...." ... I do my very best, especially if it's a student issue, to prioritize them and get the time-sensitive stuff kicked out the door, (like) anything that looks like it has distress associated with it.

How have advances on the Web changed your job?
Pretty significantly. First of all, my job wouldn't exist without the Internet. It would be very difficult to parse the amount of information I have to parse without it. I always joke that, invariably, I will stand in front of a group and someone will say, "This is Ryan Windows; he knows everything about The University of Arizona," and then the Encyclopedia Britannica quizzing will begin. "So what year was that ...?" And I always tell them, "Aw, see, now you know my dirty little secret. If I'm not in front of the computer, I don't know. But I know where to find it!" ... There have also been enormous improvements in (online) student service over the time that I've been here at the University, and I see, frankly, less and less of those easy referrals. ... But what's coming in is more problematic, more time consuming, more case management stuff that requires a little more care and repeated contacts – people doing general petitions, people who had health issues and are now trying to withdraw, leave of absence, military extensions, veterans returning, transfer students, class availability issues, student/instructor disputes, those kinds of things.

Does it ever get overwhelming?
I've got a great group of experts that support me and I can call them at any time. ... And usually people are pretty patient if they know you're helping them. But yeah, it can be overwhelming, and you have to have some self-care because all you do all day is deal with other people's problems.

What do you like best about the job?
There have been a number of students over the years who've come through that door who were really struggling, and really weren't sure that college was the place for them, and to talk to those people now – as alumni who have graduated, who are working, who have gone on to graduate work – is really a super rewarding thing, so that's one of my favorite parts of my job.