For a new student, a seemingly simple question can quickly become complicated.

An AP score missing from a student record can affect course registration. A question about changing majors may lead to additional questions about advising and career goals. A student struggling to find community may need something entirely different.

Students do not always know which university office owns their question, even when the right resources exist.

Answer U is designed to give them somewhere to start.

Officially launched this fall in the J. Willard Marriott Library, Answer U connects students with trained generalists who can answer questions, help navigate university processes and connect them with specialized resources when needed.

Creating a starting point for students

Answer U grew out of a broader university effort to make the student experience easier to navigate.

A 2024 assessment by the National Institute for Student Success found that students did not always have a clear, accessible place to get answers and identified navigating university processes as a barrier to students’ academic progress.

“Students shouldn’t miss a deadline or fall behind because they couldn’t figure out where to go for help,” said Sarah Shreeves, Alice Sheets Marriott Dean of Libraries. “Making it easier to find the right help at the right time is a student success issue.”

Over the past year, the Marriott Library team developed Answer U and brought together partners from across the university to build the referral pathways behind it. That meant mapping how students move between services, clarifying where one office’s role ends and another begins and creating a more coordinated way to connect students with help. The result is a service designed to resolve straightforward questions, help students understand university processes and connect them with specialized offices when more expertise is needed.

Early interactions demonstrate the breadth of questions students bring to the service. During summer orientation, the team responded to approximately 840 questions. During the first week of fall semester, Answer U supported approximately 300 additional student contacts across in-person service points, electronic messages and UBot interactions.

Those questions spanned more than a dozen university functions, from course materials, academic advising and registration to technology, UCards, financial aid, housing, dining, employment and well-being.

Moving students toward a solution

For Answer U Generalist April Ollivier, those early interactions reinforced something she has learned from nearly nine years of working directly with students: Sometimes students already know much of what they need to do. What they need is someone to listen, help them sort through the situation and figure out the next step.

“The number one thing is that you listen to them fully,” Ollivier said. “I can’t promise that I’ll fix every problem, but I can let them know, ‘I’m here by your side. We’re going to figure this out together.’”

On Answer U’s first full launch day, Ollivier met a transfer student whose credits had not yet been reviewed. The student had already taken steps to resolve the issue but was unsure what to do next.

Ollivier helped the student think through additional options and identify a next step. Depending on the situation, that might mean making a phone call together, identifying another contact or even walking with a student to an office.

“I try to do something in the moment that moves them toward an action,” Ollivier said.

When specialized expertise is needed, that can also mean making a warmer connection.

“Sometimes students get nervous about going into an office and aren’t sure what to say,” Ollivier said. “I would rather say, ‘Here’s the person I think you should talk to. I know them, I trust them and I think they’ll take good care of you.’”

The goal, Ollivier said, is to help students navigate while building their confidence to do it themselves.

“They’re driving the car,” Ollivier said. “I’m in the passenger seat. My goal is to get them to the point where they don’t need us. I want them to be prepared and supported enough that they can say, ‘I know what to do.’”

Building the connections behind Answer U

Answer U can only work if generalists know what they can resolve and how to connect students with the right expertise when they can’t. This summer, the Answer U Advisory Group brought together representatives from more than a dozen areas across the university, spanning academic advising, financial aid, admissions, student affairs, international student services, campus wellness and other student-facing services, to help build those connections.

The work was detailed and often complex. Individual offices worked with the Answer U team to develop procedures spelling out what generalists could handle, where they should stop and who was better equipped to take over. Because those pathways differ across the university, they had to be worked through office by office.

Ian Godfrey, assistant dean for access, information, and building services at Marriott Library, said that work gave the people building Answer U a new appreciation for the challenge students face.

“We started understanding exactly the student perspective because it became really time-consuming to navigate where the starts and stops are, what organization does this, where there’s overlap with that,” Godfrey said.

That complexity underscored why the collaboration mattered. Campus offices brought expertise that Answer U generalists could not be expected to have themselves, while the Answer U team created a common starting point that could help students reach that expertise more easily.

For Char Leary, associate director of advocacy services in the Center for Campus Wellness and a member of the Advisory Group, the work included preparing Answer U staff for situations in which a routine question may reveal that a student needs more specialized support. A student might ask about an academic issue, for example, but the conversation may reveal concerns about food or housing insecurity, mental health or another serious challenge. Leary helped the team prepare to respond appropriately and know when and how to connect students with specialized support.

The work also brought together people who do not always have regular opportunities to work through the student experience together. Leary said academic and student-support conversations can happen in different parts of the university, even though students’ needs frequently cross those boundaries.

“We’re all full of ideas and programming and resources, and now we’re working more intentionally together,” Leary said.

By building those connections across campus, the group is making it easier for students to reach the expertise they need, even when they don’t know where to start.

“I see Answer U as a bridge to all of the supports on campus,” Leary said.

Learning what works

It is still too early to measure Answer U’s long-term effect on student success. For now, the team and its campus partners are using what they learn from student interactions to strengthen the service. That cross-campus collaboration will continue as new questions reveal where connections can be strengthened or new pathways are needed.

“Did the student feel heard?” Ollivier said. “Do they have an action step that we can do together, or that they can do right after we meet, so they can move toward a solution?”

Those immediate interactions serve a larger goal. By helping students resolve problems and take important next steps, Answer U is intended to reduce barriers that can interfere with academic progress and help more students stay on track toward a degree.

For Godfrey, that starts with reducing the stress students experience simply trying to find help.

“Ultimately what Answer U does is it needs to drop the stress level for the student,” Godfrey said. “It needs to address the student in the moment where they are … letting them know there’s a solution, we’re going to get you to it, and you can spend more time being a student because of that.”

As the U works to improve retention and graduation, the premise behind Answer U is straightforward: Students should not need to understand the university’s organizational structure before they can get the help they need to make progress.

“You don’t have to do this alone,” Ollivier said. “We’re going to solve this together.”