Card, mobile credential, payment and security
Fordham University has launched mobile food ordering app, Tapingo for a number of its campus venues, following some changes to the university's food service operations.
According to the Fordham Ram, students can order food from the campus' Urban Kitchen, Cosi, A Crust Above and Salt & Sesame locations. Each of the locations list their full menus and pricing information via the app, and accept dining dollars, debit cards and credit cards.
According to Fordham's dining contract liaison, Tapingo has had at least 451 students register for the app since launching on campus this fall semester. Fordham has a total enrollment of roughly 15,000.
Tapingo is still new to the Fordham community, but university officials are optimistic about the app's initial adoption. Fordham is currently leveraging the app's standard ordering and pick-up capabilities. There is no word yet on whether the app's delivery option will be supported.
The introduction of Tapingo at Fordham, in part, coincides with the university's move to new food-service provider Aramark, and as expected, part of the app's proliferation on Fordham's campus will depend on the campus' still fledgling transition to its new food-service vendor. Fordham announced the change on April 18th, replacing Sodexo as the university’s food-service provider after a nearly five month bidding process.
The transition from Sodexo to Aramark saw the university address multiple concerns including student engagement, dining plans and an improvement to communications between the Fordham community and university dining.
Penn State's University Park and Altoona campuses are participating in a laundry pilot that sends notifications to students when machines are ready to be unloaded.
According to a university release, WashAlert sends email or text notifications to students when their load of laundry has finished washing or drying. The online portal is designed to help reduce both the overall time spent in the laundry room and the number of back-and-forth visits to check for available machines or completed jobs.
“It’s convenient and efficient,” said Conal Carr, director of housing operations at Penn State's University Park campus. “Students can view if a machine is in use and track the remaining time. By submitting an email or phone number, a student receives a notification either several minutes before or when a load is finished.”
The system also provides end of cycle notifications, which helps to reduce the amount of time students spend waiting around to transfer clothes. Students can also submit service messages when a machine isn’t working properly. Caldwell & Gregory, the system provider, has partnered with a number of universities to provide the alert and machine monitoring system, outfitting upwards of 30 campuses nationwide.
The machines at University Park and Altoona will continue to accept the university's LionCash+ for payment. LionCash+ is an online, prepaid flex account that supports on- and off-campus purchases. The funds are accepted across Penn State's university system at more than 300 on- and off-campus locations statewide.
The university's housing department will evaluate feedback from the pilot this semester and determine whether WashAlert will be implemented across all residential Penn State campuses.
July 1st marked the official changing of the guard for NACCU’s Executive Director position, with Lowell Adkins handing the reigns over to the newly appointed Dawn Thomas. But Thomas has already spent much of the summer hard at work on various NACCU activities and settling in to her new role.
With the changeover at hand, we at CR80News felt it was the perfect time to speak to Dawn about her experiences in higher education, her past association work and her thoughts on a future with NACCU. We caught up with Dawn just prior to her jetting off to the Canadian Campus Card Conference and in the midst of full transition.
The transition was facilitated by Adkins and provided a valuable primer. “I don’t know anybody that’s been lucky enough to be able transition the way I have,” says Thomas. “I feel fortunate that Lowell was willing and that I had the opportunity to learn through him.”
The move will mark the association’s first Executive Director change since 2004, but for Thomas it’s a role to which she brings established a body of work in higher education and association management. “The main goals for anybody on campus or within a higher education association – really the whole reason you’re there – is service to students and the campus,” she explains.
“This was the direction I was heading all along,” adds Thomas. “I feel very lucky because I understand the environment and the goals of a college campus having worked in that capacity, but I also understand the goals of a higher education association, so I saw the position as a good mesh of my skills.”
Thomas has been heavily involved in higher education throughout her career. For the past 17 years, she worked with the National Association for Campus Activities (NACA). Thomas made the move to NACA as director of education and research, after working in student affairs for 11 years.
Thomas’ role evolved over her time spent with NACA, enabling her to interact with virtually every facet of the association’s management structure. “My time at NACA was incredibly valuable to me as I really established a strong foundation and experience in association operations and management,” she says.
[pullquote]Something that I would like to see is for NACCU to provide more expert information on emerging technology and assist that with connections and collaborations that we develop.[/pullquote]
Her time at NACA gave her perspective on the demands of the executive director position, as well as the value of having capable and driven colleagues to help shoulder the load. “I worked with closely one executive director at NACA for 16 years, and because of our longevity a strong trust was developed that enabled me the creative freedom, at times, to go out and solve problems,” says Thomas.
“Most people don’t stay in one association for as long as I did, but I think that the relationships that develop as a result of that longevity is part of what drives success,” she adds.
As anyone joining the campus card industry for the first time can attest, there’s a learning curve. Thomas admits that things have been no different for her.
“There is a whole list of acronyms that I do not know yet,” Thomas says. (A note from this editor: she’s not the only one.) But she is diving headlong into as much industry information as possible, and posing questions to perhaps the best possible resource available, former Executive Director Lowell Adkins, NACCU members and its board. “I have a list of topics that I want to know more about, and have been pursuing them with extra fervor.”
What’s most interesting to Thomas, she says, is the rapid evolution of the card transaction system and the constant advancement of technology.
“When I started out in higher education, cards weren’t anything like they are today. They have evolved to full transaction management systems,” she says. “I think the evolution that’s happening on this front is intriguing. Technology has the ability to change and evolve so quickly in this space.”
When students at Sarah Lawrence College replace a lost student ID card, they unknowingly get a little something extra in that card – added security.
Every new ID card issued by the Yonkers, New York-based college is now equipped with a contactless chip embedded within. “We are not fully contactless yet,” says Brian Lutz, associate director of systems administration for the school. “We are doing it slowly as people get new IDs. It has been a more gradual migration.”
A few of the college’s offices are already fully deployed, using contactless credentials to unlock all doors, and a new building was just brought online that is fully equipped with contactless readers throughout. The plan is to have the entire campus switched over within the next few years.
As they make this transition, Sarah Lawrence is doing something that many campuses in the country have neglected to do. They are transitioning to a mutual authentication-based, secure, contactless environment.
“We are spending a little more money to use the full mutual authentication, but we saw that investment as worth the added security,” Lutz says.
The vast majority of college campuses in the nation are nowhere near that level of security, says Grey Bartholomew, product manager of CBORD, the company deploying the new ID system at Sarah Lawrence.
“If you look at the customer base, 90% of college campuses are still using mag stripe,” Bartholomew says. “Then you look at the 10% who use contactless and probably 90% of those are using the card serial number only.” He says that only the other 10% of that 10% are using mutual authentication – taking advantage of the true security enabled by contactless technology.
Credential security comes in levels, says Sami Nassar, vice president of cyber security at San Francisco-based NXP Semiconductors. “If we look at the most basic form of ID, it would be to write the serial number for a card on a piece of paper and laminate that,” he says. “Obviously you can put the same name on another piece of paper, meaning you would have more than one, and this would be very easy to duplicate and not be very secure.”
[pullquote]90% of campuses still use mag strip and of the 10% using contactless, probably 90% of those are using the card serial number only. Only the other 10% of that 10% are using mutual authentication – taking advantage of the true security of contactless.[/pullquote]
Slightly more secure would be to encode that serial number within a barcode, mag stripe or a chip. But if you are simply storing a serial number in an unprotected manner, it can still be readily changed or replicated. So it is still very unsecure.
Up another level, you can store the number on the card in a manner that cannot be changed or cloned. And at the highest level, mutual authentication comes into play. Using mathematical algorithms, mutual authentication prohibits ID numbers from being shared until both the card and reader have proven they are valid and authorized to share data, Nassar says.
But even when systems are capable of using that high-level mutual authentication, some implementations – including many college campuses – opt not to use it. Instead, some default to a low security approach in which the card broadcasts its serial number to any reader it encounters.
“With just the card serial number, the reader is broadcasting and saying ‘hey, is anybody out there,’ and then if a contactless card comes along, the card sends its serial number immediately without getting that mutual authentication,” Bartholomew says.
While there are some security conscious outliers on college campuses, Bartholomew says the vast majority of contactless campuses are satisfied with the lower level of security. “It is the entry-level way to get into contactless technology without breaking the bank or investing in specific readers to enable mutual authentication,” Bartholomew says.
From the perspective of most campuses, contactless is a means to ease transactions, adding convenience rather than increasing security, he explains. “They are looking at it as a way to make the transaction faster and more convenient. Contactless cards give you that capability,” Bartholomew says.
When convenience is the goal, the serial number-only protocol seems to be enough.
But not all college systems rely on a broadcast serial number, says Dan Gretz, senior director for market development at Blackboard.
Temple University is in the throws of a Request for Proposals (RFP) to find either a new food-service provider or continue with long-time partner, Sodexo.
Per a report from Temple News, the university's contract with Sodexo is set to expire at the end of the spring semester, and the decision has been made to consider bids from other food service providers. Sodexo currently provides food services across the Temple campus everywhere that meal swipe are accepted. Temple's most recent ten-year, nearly $24 million contract will officially expire in June 2017.
Temple's Office of Business Services issued a request for proposals during the summer, with the university's Purchasing Department to make a decision sometime next month. Five companies participated in the RFP process, including Sodexo, Compass and Aramark.
Per the report, Temple provided two broad criteria in their request for proposals: service to students and financial return to the university. As it relates to student satisfaction, Sodexo already conducts focus groups, customer satisfaction surveys, and works with Temple's student-run marketing consulting team to determine student needs.
While the RFP process will open Temple's eyes to other available options, the best course of action may be to take no action at all. Temple currently serves an estimated 3,500 off-campus meal plans, a figure that Sodexo’s resident district manager believes is one of the highest numbers in the country and proof that students want to eat on campus.
Other vendors will likely give similar pitches, but Sodexo believes that it holds an advantage in that it can break ground on proposed campus dining renovations sooner than its competitors. Part of Sodexo's vision at Temple includes the opening of a new rec center next year, a new library in two years, and longer term, a potential football stadium -- all projects that would include spaces to sell food.
Sodexo provides dining services for 17 locations across three of Temple’s campuses and has been Temple’s provider for 28 years.
Colleges and universities, no matter their size, are communities unto themselves. Each is a microcosm within which students develop both socially and academically.
But college communities represent just a portion of their larger, surrounding environments, and it’s vital that academic institutions be actively engaged beyond their campus borders.
The campus card is a key tool to facilitate this engagement. At first glance, the student ID forges connections within an institution’s walls, bringing together disparate agencies and providing valuable services to students and staff.
But its impact extends beyond the campus walls, enabling cardholders to engage with local businesses and merchants. It fosters interaction with the surrounding community in a mutually beneficial way – something commonly referred to as the town-and-gown relationship.
A strong tie between campus and community has far-reaching benefits, and many institutions work hard to fortify the relationship.
“Institutions want to be good neighbors in their communities, and in many areas around the country we hear of campus employees who are tasked specifically with strengthening the town-and-gown relationship,” says Sami Takieddine, director of operations for Commerce at CBORD. “Among the many tools available, the card program can be a fantastic means to very specifically support the local merchant base.”
Equally important to providing a valuable service to students, is the backing that a campus and its members can provide to the greater community. “When you can point to dollars spent out in the community with the college ID card, you can begin to quantify the support a university can give,” says Takieddine.
[pullquote]When you can point to dollars spent out in the community with the college ID card, you can begin to quantify the support a university can give.[/pullquote]
The relationship between a campus and its surrounding community is an important one for both community members and the future of the institution, says Fred Emery, director of OneCard sales at Heartland OneCard. “Students, faculty and staff often come from, and live in, the area surrounding a campus,” he says. “The relationship with the local community helps to support programs and events at the campus, whether cultural or athletic, and can also assist in increasing admissions.”
“The campus community often helps the local economy to flourish with students and staff supporting local businesses, and campuses often contribute to the overall job market in the surrounding communities as well,” adds Emery.
As for strengthening this relationship, he says campuses have a number of options at their disposal, such as:
Enabling merchants in the community to accept the campus card as a preferred payment method is an important step in fostering the town-and-gown relationship, says CBORD’s Takieddine. “Even when it’s a more expensive alternative to debit or credit, accepting the campus card shows the importance of the student demographic to local businesses,” he adds. “Especially in smaller towns where the population is a majority campus-related, the spending power of campus cardholders directly impacts the community.”
Emory University is a major participant in its surrounding Atlanta community. “Our view is one that enhances the quality of life through health care, research, cultural awareness and support and service,” says Lisa Bona, associate director of Student Financial Services and director of EmoryCard Services.
“It is critical for EmoryCard to foster positive town/gown relationships in order to provide options to our cardholders and, in turn, increase traffic to local businesses,” says Bona.
Bona’s own affinity for the town-and-gown relationship has been a facet of both her personal and professional life for quite some time. “I am originally from a small town in South Carolina and worked at the university in that town for ten years,” she explains. “I have always believed that the relationships you create are vital to a successful, healthy way of life.”
For students at the University of Pennsylvania, meal plan purchases have decreased in recent years. So the university's business services has implemented a 5% discount on dining dollar usage at certain campus dining locations in an effort to incentivize the purchase of meal plans.
According to a report from the Daily Pennsylvanian, the discount is new this fall and offers students a tangible benefit to using dining dollars on campus, as opposed to other methods of payment. At non-discounted locations, dining dollars represent a one-to-one ratio with standard cash, leading some students to opt out of purchasing meal plans.
According to the Penn Dining website, the new discount is being applied at six campus dining locations. Business Services officials say that retail dining locations on Penn's campus, such as Tortas Frontera and Beefsteak, have franchised agreements with the university through food service provider Bon Appetit and are thus not eligible for the 5% discount.
Last year Penn reported having some 4,300 students on a dining plan, most of which were undergraduates living in on-campus housing. These students also have the option of using cash, credit or bursar on campus, so the new dining dollar discount is intended to provide added value in the dining plans.
The dining dollar discount is one of a number of changes being made to Penn’s dining system this year. Joining the discount are extended dinner hours and the addition of a new dining location that features community dining.
A new delivery service app is now live on the Duke University campus this semester, and it's crowdsourcing food deliveries to students, by students.
According to a report from the Duke Chronicle, JoyRun is a campus-wide group chat that enables users to find other students that are at their favorite restaurant and then request deliveries. Likewise, users that are already at a restaurant can inform others via the app that they are available to pick up orders.
Still in its infancy, JoyRun is seeking to form a campus community mindset wherein students can be both the delivery service and the customer. In practice, a user may be making a Starbucks run, but with the app could then decide to pick up coffee orders for other students while there.
Users who do opt to deliver will be compensated for their efforts. Similar to Uber, all payment exchanges occur through the app. Users ordering a food run pay a small delivery fee, which is wired to the account balance of the person making the delivery. The more people who order, the more money a runner can make.
The delivery fee is set by the student making the run, or delivery, and has to be be between $0 and $5. Delivery prices vary depending on the time of day that the order is placed -- later hours carry a higher delivery fee. It's a delivery price that JoyRun says is less expensive than similar apps such as UberEATS or Postmates. Users pay for the food and the delivery fee within the app, and the money is deposited in the runner’s account via the app after the delivery is successfully made.
JoyRun enables deliveries for more than just food orders, as well. Students can also place run requests for groceries or household items.
The app was founded last December, and has since seen spot adoption at campuses across the country. JoyRun reports that the app typically reaches 20-30% of a campus' student body within months of launch and has, to date, been downloaded by some 10,000 users nationally. The app is now in use at eight universities total including Duke, UC Irvine, California Polytechnic State University, UC Davis, the University of Oregon, Iowa State University, Cornell and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The University of Maryland has implemented a new biometric access system at campus dining halls in the form of SAFRAN's MorphoWave biometric solution.
A touchless solution, SAFRAN's MorphoWave biometric terminal reads all four fingerprints of the hand as it is passed through the read area. MorphoWave is the first biometric access solution to capture and match four fingerprints with a single hand movement, and enables access in a completely contactless manner.
The dynamic, touchless capability allows users to remain "on the move" when passing through a control point, making it ideal for high traffic applications like a dining hall line. Additional MorphoWave features include:
According to a report from The Diamondback, Maryland students began registering into the system last spring break through the conclusion of the academic year, while incoming freshmen registered during orientations during the summer months.
Maryland's Dining Services oversaw the enrollment process, and despite some initial challenges in enrolling such a large number of students, the process was deemed a successful one.
Enrollment into the biometric system is fairly straightforward -- and quick at just a minute long -- with students swiping both their right and left hands through the scanner twice to complete enrollment. It was a process that Dining Services and Maryland's orientation office integrated into student orientation schedules.
Dubbed "Cardless Check-In," the biometric system enables students to access dining halls without the use of their UMD ID card. Once enrolled, students check in by waving their hand through the MorphoWave scanner to gain access.
With the new system students will no longer need a UMD ID card to access their own meals, but when students bring a guest a UMD ID will be necessary to obtain a guest pass or use dining dollars to allow guest access. Maryland will implement four MorphoWave terminals at the campus' North Diner, two terminals at 251 North dining hall and three terminals at the South Campus dining hall.
For now, biometric access will be used exclusively for regular, resident student access to the dining halls. The UMD ID will still be needed to make purchases at other campus locations, as well as for building access and general identification.
Enrollment in the biometric system is completely voluntary, and students that don’t want to enroll can simply continue to use the UMD ID card and report to the cashier on duty to gain access.
It's the start of a new semester and students are flooding back to campus to campus in droves. And while much of the excitement and anticipation of the new year will be centered on to graduating in time or how well the football team will do this season, the oft-overlooked card system will be there to underpin their experience on campus.
This week's Throwback Thursday honors this notion with our "The campus card system: A university’s most important asset" written back in 2009. The piece details the importance of the campus card system to a university, and how its many vital services would be painfully apparent if they were suddenly no longer available.
Speaking with Tom Bell of Blackboard, the campus card system was described as a highly functional enterprise system, that’s more important than the student information system. “If the student information system went down for a day, that would be okay. But if you took your campus transaction system down, then you’d have to figure out different ways to eat, to get into buildings, and so on," he says. "Imagine the attention you’d get if you turned your system off and went on vacation.”
Why then does the campus card system so often live in the periphery of peoples minds? Why isn't it given the respect and admiration it deserves? Bell believed in 2009 that it was a matter of self marketing. Without proper marketing of the card system and its many services, there's less of a chance for department growth or increased funding.
“Tell people what you’re doing, create an annual report that describes what’s happening in this card office, the amount of money flowing through the office and the ubiquity of those readers,” Bell says. “You have to be thinking about how to present the card to your university. They may take the card for granted, yet if the card doesn’t work, you have a wallet without money.”
Bell explains that campus card systems were built to work behind the scenes, but that doesn't mean that other key campus stakeholders can't be involved. “The campus card system has been supporting the mission of the university and no one talks about that.”
Hear more about how campus card offices can market themselves and their card systems, as well as some ways to maximize revenues in 2009's "The campus card system: A university’s most important asset."
