Renovations began on the mailroom in McCullough Student Center on Monday, June 10, and concluded on Friday, July 19. These changes were part of a general overhaul of the downstairs of the student center, including a new locker system, updated flooring and an updated mail retrieval system.
This remodeling was initiated to accommodate the shifting trend over the years towards students receiving less letter mail and more packages.
The old mailroom had about 2,000 individual mailboxes designated to each student. However, with an uptick in the number of students on campus in recent years, especially after Covid-19, the number of assignable boxes quickly became insufficient.
To accommodate the growing number of students on campus, the mailroom installed 290 shared lockers that workers will assign to students on a one-time basis.
Manager of Custodial and Support Services Jodie Keith described the month-long construction process in an interview with The Campus.
“The first piece was removing the mailboxes. We had some basic electrical work because we needed to have outlets,” Keith said.
Keith also mentioned that additional installations like data ports for the computerized lockers and a releveling of the floor were needed to ensure the new lockers were fully accessible and functional, and did not interfere with the existing infrastructure of the student center.
After the major renovations were complete, Black Diamond Builders of Brandon, Vt. installed the lockers and trained the mailroom workers on the same day. The new system was chosen after comparisons to other colleges’ mail centers, according to Keith.
“Williams College uses the locker system and package processing software. We visited Williams to see this software system, and then we went to University of New Hampshire to see another system, and decided to go with [Williams’],” Keith said.
Prior to the renovations, anything larger than an envelope had to be picked up from the window and signed off on. Now, not only have hours increased, but students can pick up their packages throughout the week as long as the packages have already been placed into a locker.
“Last week we averaged about 700 packages a day,” said Ruby Neustadt ’25, a mailroom employee. “Now that students are here they have been turning over faster and we can get more packages in lockers so students can pick up at their convenience.”
Relying on a QR code and scanner, mailroom employees receive the packages while identifying available lockers to place them in. After assigning the locker to a student for pick up, the student receives an email with the locker number and a one-time pin to unlock it. Assigned lockers with packages in them can also be opened by scanning the Middlebury ID of the corresponding student.
For smaller envelopes, there is a folder system that uses the same software to identify free slots in which to place mail for pick-up. Once that student picks up their mail, it can be used for another student.
“When we used to process packages, we would write the name of the student on the box, and then we also printed out a sticker with a Universal Product Code (UPC) on it,” Keith said. “We no longer do those two steps, so things move very quickly, and we can get packages into lockers really quickly; sometimes the turnover is under two hours.”
In addition to the reduced wait time, the mailroom will no longer have to rely on the warehouse behind McCullough at the beginning of the school year to manage the influx of packages for new students.
“It was hot and not very clean, and the lines of students would have to wait in the road, and it wasn't safe… I just think the workflow is just so much better for the staff,” Keith said.
The same number of workers will still need to do on-campus deliveries but the mailroom anticipates hiring fewer workers when it comes to processing packages. These changes have transformed the way mailroom workers receive and process packages and eased the experience of students stopping by McCullough to pick up their mail, according to Keith.
