CENTERS innovates and enhances our quantitative and qualitative performance outcomes at all of our sites each and every year.
Our focus is singular: we serve the needs of college students and achieve the mission driven outcomes that our clients value. Along the way, we have become the employer of choice for high performing, ambitious collegiate recreation professionals.
We learned before executing our first management agreement that the CENTERS brand would get in the way of accomplishing our clients’ goals and achieving their unique mission. As such, our visual identity reflects the college or university’s brand, and we require support from our clients in the form of furnishing business cards and college or university identification cards for all CENTERS staff. Since our actions represent the actions of our clients, we take the training and development of all our staff very seriously.
We believe the foundation of a successful student employment model consists of the following:
- Intentionally creating appropriately tiered employment so students have the opportunity to take on progressively more responsible positions
- Assessing student learning goals when reviewing and revising job responsibilities and expectations
- Involving student employees in the recruitment and selection process
- Providing performance evaluations and peer reviews on an annual basis
- Utilizing ethical and sound hiring practices
- Providing appropriate training that accommodates various learning styles
- Entrusting students with responsibility and authority
- Creating a culture of high expectations that motivates high performance
Designing and implementing effective programs that generate high participation and/or revenue are dependent on actively listening to participants and having a keen sense of industry trends. Many CENTERS employees also are industry leaders within campus recreation and are encouraged to be innovative, but only when such action is cost-effective and aligned with the university’s mission.
CENTERS’ experience speaks for itself: we are career campus recreation professionals with more than a decade’s experience managing under the CENTERS model, and we are proud to have a 100% renewal rate since 1999. We pride ourselves in being self-sufficient and responsive. Customer service and professionalism are the two foundational pillars of our delivery every step of the way. We couple this philosophy with a business-minded / bottom-line-driven approach that places emphasis on cost-benefit analysis and operating efficiencies, both of which are factored into all our decision making when operating the facility.
Having planned over 200 student recreation centers, B&D’s research and methods team continually acquires and disseminates the most current and usable data. This collaboration between B&D and CENTERS provides access to nationwide facility data such as utility costs, staffing levels, programming scope, and the financial performance of collegiate recreation centers.