Bathroom stall newsletter earns GCC employee top national honor

In the world of bright ideas, Amy Masters has carved a unique niche in business communications. She has managed to come up with a way to captivate a captive audience about mundane things, like refund policies.

She's a financial specialist at the Genesee Community College Business Office and was recently honored by the National Association of College and University Business Officers. At its Student Financial Services Conference last month in San Antonio, Texas, she won First Place in the inaugural Great Idea Contest for the "Stall Wall."

The contest is an opportunity for colleges and universities across the country to share ideas that may be useful to other institutions. The "Stall Wall" is a monthly newsletter placed on the back of doors inside bathroom stalls notifying students of essential financial-aid deadlines and Business Office policies.

Masters was awarded a certificate along with two boxes of tasty cookies fresh from a San Antonio bakery.

"Communication has been quite a challenge for many colleges," Masters said. "Although we send information to students through traditional mail and email, our communications tend to fall by the wayside. Students were overlooking some important dates and information relating to the semester. We needed to come up with a way to truly have a captive audience so that we could get this crucial information across."

She wanted to communicate with students and discovered the only place on campus for a truly captive audience was the bathroom. As a result, she created "The Stall Wall," a  publication by the Business Office that displays information on statements (bills), payment, financial aid, refunds and the SUNY Tuition Refund Policy.

The first "Stall Wall" went up in August. The Business Office received a lot of great feedback from staff, faculty and students. After a few months, Masters feared students might lose interest in "The Stall Wall" because some of the information is somewhat monotonous. So in November, trivia was added to "The Stall Wall."

"We thought that if we could get the students to read something interesting perhaps they would read something important," Masters said. "The trivia was a hit! Many students, in reading the trivia, also read the important information. We have found 'The Stall Wall' to be a friendly method of presenting essential information to students."

Masters is a 2007 graduate of Elmira College and a native of Brimfield, Mass. She now resides in Batavia with her husband, Todd Masters.