June 3 Weekly Update: Optional Add-Ons; Understanding our Communications

Bottom Line, Up Front

• Understanding the kinds of communications that go to families, and troubleshooting
• Optional add-ons: tuition insurance, renter’s insurance, Zipcars, Storage Scholars, Wake Wash

Dear parents and families of incoming students,

June is here, and there will be more and more things your students will be asked to do from now until August. Here’s your weekly update on things families should know or do (see all past emails here). 

Upcoming key dates or action items for families

Here’s what you should know this week.

• Ensure your student has a plan to have a laptop, as they are required. As of June 1, new academic year WakeWare laptops became available for purchase online (or in the Bookstore). If your student plans to bring their own laptop, be sure to check to see what the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) requirements are.
  • Some students qualify for a technology grant, which covers the full price of a standard WakeWare model. Students should check their Wake Forest financial aid portal and WFU.edu email for more information.
• Sign up for our Virtual New Student Reception on June 24. (We are also planning in-person New Student Receptions in locations with a sizable amount of incoming students. The list is not yet finalized, so keep checking our website to see if additional dates or locations are added. We regret that we cannot offer them in all areas where our Deacs live.)
• Talk to your student about having them make you an authorized payer (third party access) in Workday. This allows you to receive notifications of tuition bills and other payments due (strongly recommended that all students authorize a third-party payer; student instructions here – they need to be logged in with their WFU address).
  • In the past, we have had students add Authorized Payers/Third Party Access but not grant access to specific functions, such as Make a Payment, receive Proactive Past Due Notifications, View Account Activity and View Account statements. To manage permissions via Workday, students will need to:
    • Type in the search “Manage Permissions for my Third Party”
    • Choose the permissions.
    • Click Ok.
    • Type a purpose of waiver for the permissions and confirm FERPA permissions.

Optional add-ons

Tuition Insurance

• Have you considered tuition insurance? Wake Forest is always concerned about students who suffer serious illness and accidents and have to leave the University before a semester is completed. In many instances, it means not only the loss of time invested in studies, but also the loss of the semester’s costs.
• Wake Forest offers an elective tuition insurance plan through A.W.G. Dewar, Inc. that will help minimize financial loss if a student suffers a serious illness or accident and must withdraw before the end of a semester. The deadline to enroll is August 25.
• This plan extends and enhances the University’s published refund policy. In cases of withdrawal due to accident, illness or mental health conditions as defined in the plan, the plan assures up to a 75% refund throughout the term.
• Learn more about the plan and apply if you wish.

Renter’s Insurance

• Wake Forest (and the Office of Residence Life and Housing) does not assume responsibility for theft, loss, or damage to students’ personal property. 
• Sometimes students leave their room doors unlocked and/or their property unattended in public places. That is never a good idea. So please talk to your student about keeping their room locked and their belongings secure at all times; this is their best defense against theft.
• Additionally, the University does not cover property loss for damage due to facility incidents that may occur. Before coming to campus, you should determine what it would cost to replace belongings such as clothing, electronics — including cellphones, television, laptop — linens, etc.
• As part of the housing application process, your student will have the opportunity to purchase renter’s insurance from a partner vendor, GradGuard. Additionally, you may wish to check your family’s homeowners insurance policies. Many policies will cover loss or theft even if the policy is in your parents’ names and you are living on campus.

Zipcars (car-sharing program)

• Wake Forest is a very walkable campus. The majority of first-year students choose not to bring a car to campus.
• Zipcars: If your student doesn’t have a car (or you don’t want them to bring a car to school), we have you covered! Wake Forest has a car-sharing program called Zipcar that allows students to rent a car for hours or even a day. 
• Zipcars are parked on campus near the first-year residence halls on Gulley Dr. They are available 24 hours a day. Rates include gas and insurance. 

Storage Scholars (moving and shipping): 

• Storage Scholars is a company that began with a Wake Forest student in our entrepreneurship program, Sam Chason (‘20), and we are proud of the company he has built (see their Shark Tank episode!). While Storage Scholars is an official partner with Wake Forest, whether you choose to use them or not is up to your family. As with Tuition Insurance, we simply want you to know this service exists in case it would be helpful. Here’s a message from Storage Scholars:

Dear Wake Forest Families,

Can you believe that your student’s move-in day is just around the corner? Why waste precious time schlepping items to their room or scouring department stores for last-minute essentials on move-in day?

Instead, they can arrive to their room with everything already in place, ready to welcome them.

Storage Scholars is here to simplify your family’s move-in experience. Our shipping deadline is approaching, so take advantage of our services today before time runs out

• Ship Your Boxes: Send boxes from your house or your favorite retailer to a Storage Scholars facility near your campus.
  
  Delivery to Your Student’s Residence Hall: Your student’s packages will be delivered and ready in their room the day before they arrive on campus.
  
  Sign up online here!

Wake Wash

Wake Wash is Wake Forest’s exclusively licensed alumni-owned and student-operated laundry delivery service. They provide laundry bags for students who leave their dirty clothes outside their residence hall room, which Wake Wash picks up and returns, washed and folded. In addition, they offer a full pick-up and drop-off dry cleaning service.

This may be an attractive option for some families, and others not. But we want you to know it exists.

Understanding the kinds of communications that go to families

• We have had some questions from new families asking to ‘get on the email list,’, so I wanted to explain the kinds of communications we send and how to troubleshoot those. There are three main types of emails we send families:
  
  • Official emails to all families (or a large subset), which are sent from a Wake Forest server. These are emails such as these Weekly Updates every Tuesday, the Wake Parents & Families monthly e-newsletter (which goes out mid-month each month), information about Family Weekend, and/or any big news we need all families to hear.
    
    You do not have to sign up to get these emails; they automatically go to all parents for whom we have a valid email (this is why we ask you to Verify Your Family Record in Wake Network!)
    
    These emails are sent from a WFU server and typically have a reply-to address of parents@wfu.edu, returns@wfu.edu, alumni@wfu.edu; occasionally we send on behalf of another office, like Family Weekend, and the reply address will be to that specific office.
    
  • Emails to segmented groups of families, also sent from a Wake Forest server. These are typically used for smaller, targeted audiences. Some examples are: emails to families with a new student in the Atlanta area to invite to a New Student Reception, or families of arts majors in New York for an event there. In other words, these are typically to invite to a regional event or to share news with a specific group. You do not have to sign up to get these emails, and the messages are also sent from a WFU server.
    
  • The Daily Deac, our opt-in parent and family blog that goes out each weekday around 5 p.m. from a non-WF server. The Daily Deac is a publication you must opt in to. It does not go out automatically to all families. You can subscribe here (and if you don’t like it, you can unsubscribe using the link in the footer of any Daily Deac email). We send the Daily Deac through a blog push service outside of our Wake Forest system (it’s called Mailchimp).
    
• Troubleshooting our communications. Here are some common issues and how to solve them:
  
  • “I’m not getting Wake emails!” Sometimes families tell me their spouse/partner is getting emails, but they are not. In these cases, the issue is often that the emails we are sending out are being filtered out by your Internet Service Provider as potential spam, or are automatically routing to your junk/spam/quarantine folder. (Unfortunately, once we hit ‘send’ on an email, we can’t control how your ISP interprets it.)
    
    If you have not searched your spam folder for wfu.edu emails, you might want to check there first, and then either mark the email as from a ‘safe sender’ or hit “move to inbox” to try and avoid future emails going to spam. If we are not in spam/junk/quarantine, try these fixes:
    • Add parents@wfu.edu, alumni@wfu.edu, and returns@wfu.edu as contacts in your email system. We use various email addresses, and having us as a contact might help.
      
    • Talk to your Internet Service Provider to see if they can tweak your settings to allow email from WFU to reach you (vs getting caught in a spam filter).
      
    • If you had given us a work email in Wake Network, but you have a home email on a different ISP (or vice versa), you can switch to the other email in Wake Network and see if that solves the issue.
      
• “Other parents I know got an email but I didn’t!” Sometimes we send emails to segmented groups of families as described above. It may be that there is an event that is restricted to a specific geographic area, or a specific major or class year, etc. In those cases, it is often for an event where there is a maximum capacity and so the guest list is tailored.
  
• “I get the Daily Deac, but not other emails from Wake.” Because the Daily Deac is sent out from blog-push service, and not our normal Wake server, sometimes families’ ISPs will accept the Daily Deac but reject the regular WFU emails. All you can do is talk to your ISP (or your IT department if you are using a work email) and see if they can tweak your settings to allow our emails to come through. You can also add parents@wfu.edu, alumni@wfu.edu, and returns@wfu.edu as contacts in your email system, as having us as a contact might help.
  
• “I used to get the Daily Deac, but it stopped coming.” What most likely has happened is the Daily Deac is getting routed to spam or junk, so check there first. If it is not there, it is possible that you may have accidentally clicked on the Unsubscribe button, which got you off the list. In that case, you need to email us at parents@wfu.edu so we can have Mailchimp (our blog push service) send an invitation to you to resubscribe.
  
• “If I hit ‘reply’ to a Daily Deac, where does that email go?” Straight to my inbox, so I can answer you 🙂
  

NOTE: next week’s topic is about safety, so we will cover safety notifications (and how to receive them) then.

Parting thoughts

We will continue sending weekly messages to our new families throughout the summer, so stay tuned for more information! If you missed last week’s message, please see our archive.

With best wishes,

Betsy Chapman, Ph.D. (‘92, MA ‘94)
Executive Director of Family Communications