PARAMUS — The students call him "Mr. BCC."
Since January of last year, Bergen Community College's Facebook page has served as a 24/7 information desk, absent of all the red tape that any undergraduate will tell you is a hallmark of the college experience. And the desk has been staffed by one man, whose identity was kept a close-guarded secret.
"'Mr. BCC' was their name," he told NJ.com. "They kind of branded me that."
Larry Hlavenka, Jr., Mr. BCC himself, is the human smart phone behind the Bergen Community's Facebook presence. And he's almost always on call.
Visit the page and you'll find the kind of academic cheerleading you'd expect from a school's Facebook account, but read a little closer and you'll also notice the rapid-fire question-and-answer session that goes on all day.
Is school open today? Yes. What time does the bursar's office close? Five o'clock. Seven o'clock on Tuesdays.
"The followers will joke about this," he said. "They'll say, 'He just answered this question five minutes ago! Why are you asking again?'"
The questions fit a few general themes: Snow days, holidays, financial aid and registration deadlines are common topics. Those, Hlavenka can answer within minutes. Sometimes it's a little trickier.
"If somebody's asking about specific curricula, or their schedule, or a degree requirement, although I could probably answer, I don't want to answer the question, you know?" he said. "Because just in case, I don't want to give them the wrong information that ends up hurting them graduating or anything like that."
The Facebook page often serves as a point of entry for students, so Hlevenka will send them in the right direction, often the school's advising arm, the Center for Student Success, or individual department heads.
"Generally, I think they appreciate the fact that maybe they still have to talk to somebody, but at least now they know where they have to go," he said.
In one status update, Hlevenka posted a commemoration of the page's one year anniversary on January 24. He wrote:
Break out the candles – today's an important anniversary. One year ago, this page went live. Since then, 6,410 of you have joined me, making this the No. 1 community college page in NJ and one of the fastest growing the country. You know I've been here nights, weekends, vacations, whatever – and maybe that's why this page has been so successful. So, Bergen, let me hear your thoughts on this page – even though, as I think you now know, I've been listening all along.
One student compared him to Batman. Another said he was like Charlie from "Charlie's Angels."
"I know everybody is thinking it, so I'm just gonna say it," a third commented on the post. "This Facebook page is more helpful than Web Advisor," the school's official online resource.
Currently, 6,912 people subscribe to the page — more than any of the state's other community college, Hlavenka says, though he concedes that the school itself is also the state's largest, with an enrollment that hovers around 17,000. On snow days, it becomes the main source for information on closings and delays. According to data Hlavenka provided to NJ.com, visits to the page spike as high as 27,000 when there's inclement weather.
Nearly every institution of higher learning is on Facebook, but most of their pages are extensions of the school's marketing efforts. They may advertise campus events, highlight faculty and student achievements and share positive coverage of the school, but ultimately their goal is promotion.
Bergen Community College's page does that, too, but the format is more like a call-in show than an infomercial. There's a certain amount of risk that comes with that kind of direct engagement on Facebook: Inviting direct questions cedes control over the tenor of the conversation.
As a result, the page gets its share of student complaints, which range from the legitimate ("is anyone else experiencing problems with web advisor?") to the inane ("why is bergen the only school opened on presidents day?! all the other colleges and schools are closed!"). But all of them get equal treatment.
Dealing with every question, comment and complaint takes time, something Hlavenka acknowledged in his anniversary post. He told NJ.com that the longest the page goes unattended is during his 30-mile commute from Westfield to the school's main campus in Paramus.
"I've been on the Metro in D.C. answering Facebook questions, I've been watching the NFC championship games with my dad and my wife, answering Facebook questions, I've been about to eat Christmas dinner answering Facebook questions," he said. "So yeah, that can be difficult. But you know what? It's showing our community that, this college, we do care about what your concerns are, we have somebody who's going to answer them, and it's important to us."
Hlavenka is also the host and producer of "Studio Bergen," a monthly program shot on the college's main campus in Paramus.
Hlavenka, 28, is a former newspaper reporter with a degree in public relations. The college recently promoted him from his job as a public relations assistant, where he started the Facebook account, to manager of "social media/web
services/public relations."
He said he posts something going on around a school every morning, and answers anywhere from 10 to 20 questions daily. The Facebook page is only a small portion of his normal office duties, which also include a half-hour television show produced in a studio on campus, called "Studio Bergen." So in addition to Facebook, he's big on YouTube.
To this point, he's only been known as Mr. BCC, politely deflecting student attempts at drawing him out from behind the Facebook page.
"I'll be outed, but that's OK," he said. "I guess Bruce Wayne is going to be figured out in the next 'Batman' movie anyway, right?"
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
No comments:
Post a Comment