Orgsync Blog

Tuesday evening we made it to Toledo for our training at Owens Community College. However, we were deeply disappointed that our first day of training was canceled due to the steady snowfall and that our two-day training program was cut down to one.

Although we got several inches of snow, the cold did not discourage students and administrators from coming out to our training sessions. Students and organization advisors were excited to learn more about OrgSync and how it would be able to help solve their organization frustrations. The Owens staff was elated to learn how OrgSync will streamline their typically tedious tasks and create a paperless office within!
Students were astonished at OrgSync’s robust platform; allowing them to register organizations, submit event and travel requests, reserve meeting rooms, and download end of the year reports. And these are only a few of OrgSync’s capabilities!

During my experiences in higher education, I was always frustrated with the paperwork and bureaucracy that kept me from working directly with students. That is why I love OrgSync so much. Campus administrators can save time and money, which will allow them to work more closely with students! After all I did not get my masters degree in bureaucratic paper pushing, nor did any other professional in higher education (you all know what I am talking about).

Owens has a great student activities staff, and I look forward to seeing their campus evolve from all the opportunities OrgSync is bringing them. Although we are sad to leave Owens campus, it is time to move on to yet another campus. Onward to Ohio Wesleyan University. Stay tuned for part three of Le Tour de Ohio!

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If you have read this blog for any amount of time you already realize how much OrgSync loves and appreciate our clients. We also love the opportunity to travel to new campuses, meet our clients face to face, conduct on-site trainings, and discuss the best way to launch an individual campus to meet their needs. Since I worked on college campuses for 10 years, I always feel at home regardless of the location. Eric and I (Jeff) just wrapped up the first leg of our Tour de Ohio with a trip to Bowling Green State University. We spent 2 days meeting with the Student Affairs staff, student leaders, and IT staff.

We spent most of our time learning about their student organization processes so we could best construct an implementation plan to meet their needs and make their life a little easier. I was extremely impressed with the support they give their student leaders. BGSU has an extensive student organization funding process, and a dedicated staff that counsels and advises organizations on fiscal responsibility. It was great to sit down with their staff and brainstorm how OrgSync could help simplify their process and free up time for the Student Affairs Office to work on increasing student engagement.

One of the highlights of the trip was when we were showing OrgSync to a group of students, and one of them blurted out, “Where has this website been?” As if she has spent a life-time manually filling out paperwork and tracking down advisors for signatures. The students were all very excited to explore OrgSync and are looking forward to all the capabilities OrgSync brings to BGSU. We look forward to working with Bowling Green State University and building a long lasting relationship with them.

Next Stop Owens Community College- Toledo, OH

Bowling Green State University

Students on Campus

BGSU Student Union

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Today’s guest blogger is one of our current OrgSync clients, Rebecca Delo. Rebecca is the Assistant Dean of Students for Leadership Programs at Muskingum College and has been using OrgSync on her campus for the past semester. We love building strong relationships with the administrators and student leaders on our campuses and we are so fortunate to have the opportunity to work with her and so many other amazing people. We always love hearing success stories and best practices and we are constantly learning from our partners on campuses across the country! Here is Rebecca’s story about her experience with OrgSync.

We just started using OrgSync at the beginning of the Fall 2008 semester. I need to mention that we completed the early stages of implementation about a day before students came to campus; it can be done on short notice! I told our student leaders that my main expectation for the fall semester was that they complete the registration process for their groups and get their members to join. We will do more education about the other tools throughout this semester and in the future, but my comments below are all from the view of someone that is definitely still a novice.  

Why do you need OrgSync?
We initially looked at OrgSync as a way to keep better student organization records over time. We are a small college (about 1500 FTE), but we have many active student organizations on campus. Through OrgSync’s forms we will be able to compare registration information from one year (or semester or moment) to the next, something that was previously labor and paper intensive for our staff and students.

Equally important was the need to supply student leaders with a reliable way to transition organization records from one year to the next. Students can now use their individual group pages to store constitutions, financial records and other group information. I expect this feature to end some of the “last year’s secretary took the folder and didn’t come back and I don’t know what to do” conversations that I usually hear in the fall.

Which features do you use most?
The forms are a key part of our use of OrgSync. With just a few clicks I can quickly turn our existing paper forms into online forms. So far we use forms for annual registration, student fee budget allocation, other funding requests, event planning and greek rush information. Over time I expect we will use the forms feature more and more as it becomes part of the culture of our student organizations.

Tell us a story about a project or situation where OrgSync helped you out.
Prompted by a staff member that brought the idea from another institution, we started a t-shirt slogan campaign in Fall 2008 to unify student groups around the ideas of involvement and campus pride. The easiest way to explain the campaign is to give a few examples from the 60 slogans that have been created so far this year:

Handed out at our Activities Fair: “Be Involved”
Student Senate: “Be Heard”
Business Club: “Be Ambitiou$”
Campus Republicans: “Be Right”
Habitat for Humanity: “Be Built”

We encouraged organizations to come up with their own “Be” t-shirt slogans, and we worked with a local printer to print the shirts.  I needed to make the order process easy for students, so I put the order form on OrgSync. As the campaign caught on and the orders started rolling in, I realized that the electronic form was a really important part of the process. I can forward complete submissions directly to the printer, which makes tracking the orders simple for me, too. I manage the orders through a report I pull from all the completed forms, and I can update that information as often as necessary.

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21st Annual
National Collegiate Leadership Conference
Hosted at The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona
February 13-15, 2009
Only $50!

Join us for the 2009 National Collegiate Leadership Conference in Tucson, Arizona!

The National Collegiate Leadership Conference is a 3-day leadership development experience for students and advisors on the beautiful campus of The University of Arizona. The 2009 conference, February 13-15 2009, will feature over 50 workshop sessions, a keynote banquet, teambuilding, networking, excursions, an awards banquet, service projects, and an opportunity to earn a leadership certificate. Register by January 25th for only $50 per person and receive a free conference t-shirt. After January 25th, registration will go up to $75.

NCLC is also excited to announce that James Castrission and Justin Jones will deliver our 2009 Conference Keynote Address. Justin and James were the first people to successfully kayak the Tasman Sea, “Crossing the Ditch” between Australia and New Zealand. Check out their story at www.crossingtheditch.com.au. The 2009 conference will also offer participants an opportunity to experience Tucson through one of many excursions. Take a hike in the beautiful Sonoran Desert, visit museums and galleries, or learn about the unique history of southern Arizona.

For complete information, including conference schedule and registration, please visit www.leadership-conference.org. For more information, please contact Tom Murray at tam@email.arizona.edu or 520-621-8046.

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OrgSync is pleased to introduce Jessica Pettitt as a guest Blogger. Jessica and I both started working at the University of Arizona at the same time a little over two years ago.  We had very little in common but somehow became friends. Jess left UA to become a Social Justice and Diversity consultant for CAMPUSPEAK, and continues to be a great resource for me.  Jess has worked in South Carolina, Oregon, New York City, Arizona, and is now thriving in Northern California. I am proud to say Jessica has been nominated as the best Diversity Artist by Campus Activities Magazine for 2008 and 2009. Please vote for her here.

Jessica will be conducting a webinar February 25 (10:00 am PST) Titled: Social Justice: When Diversity Isn’t Enough. The webinar is free, and you can register for it here.

Jessica’s blog entry is an excerpt originally published in the Association of Fraternity Advisors newsletter.
Pettitt, J. Social Justice: When Diversity ISN’T Enough. Perspectives. A Publication for members of the Association of Fraternity Advisors (AFA). Spring 2008, pg. 12-13.

When Diversity ISN’T Enough

At a young age, my dad drilled an Albert Einstein quote into my head, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” The quote may sound similar to our work in Student Affairs. How many times have I expected fellow college administrators to respond in a new way to a crisis only to be disappointed by similar results? We can make new flyers and T-shits, sponsor different speakers, and develop a strategic plan, but if we are doing the same thing we should not expect something different to happen. The same can be true for our approach to diversity and issues of social justice. Over the past decade, the verbiage used has included tolerance, acceptance, celebration and awareness, evolving into today’s buzz word, inclusion. The foundational concepts of multiculturalism and diversity are used to relate to issues of recruitment, retention, matriculation and community relations of diverse students and perspectives. The question remains whether these initiatives actually manifest into something widely different. Are we experiencing different results in chapters, departments and on campus? Despite an ever-evolving language, a consistent and comfortable sense of complacency remains supported by our institutions and colleagues. For “real change” to occur, we must be willing to become uncomfortable – to become aware of the active role we have in supporting the current system of rhetoric.

The motivation for this article stems from my visits to numerous campuses responding to ‘blackface’ theme parties, hate crimes and other acts of violence, or requiring mandatory diversity trainings for new chapter members over the past eight years. I am not, however, talking about affirmative action, desegregation, or media relations; my purpose is not to bring up feelings of inadequacy or defensiveness. My purpose is to acknowledge that to “walk the talk” and embrace concepts of social justice we must take risks, name our assumptions and judgments, and acknowledge our individual role in supporting systematic oppression. It means making a conscious change to the normal rhetoric. I must recognize my own privilege and my active role in perpetuating a system from which I benefit. Social justice is exciting and optimistic because each person can make a difference to society, it costs nothing, and there is no expectation of perfection. The cause is hidden, but the result is well known…

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“Blanket Email Syndrome” : The numb communicational state that students develop after receiving a series of mass emails, in which, the majority of the content is irrelevant.

In our travels to colleges and universities across the country, we have met numerous administrators who are frustrated with their ability to open lines of communication with students. Many have gone to the great lengths of directly text messaging students themselves. Others will turn their heads away from their computer screen to avoid seeing photos on Facebook. Campus life administrators have found themselves in the difficult situation of trying to disseminate large amounts of vital information without “crying wolf”; possibly turning off the student body to their list-serve (or blanket) emails. The causes of blanket email syndrome are not rooted in student apathy, but in the average students’ sense of urgency and the relevance of given information.

It is safe to say that technology has sped up the campus world, and in the daily touch-and-go lifestyle most students adhere to, students have found faster methods of communication. Mobile technology and the internet provide an increasing number of ways to communicate, and there is no question as to whom the primary adopters of these new technologies has been. One administrator recently reported, “My student body president told me yesterday that she only uses email to talk to old people!”

Despite the wonderful sense of humor this administrator had to a comment most would wince at, the message was pretty clear. The average student has already settled on their preferred methods of communication by the time they reach college, and some may even call it an early establishment of a digital identity. However, to reach a particular student, one must now either know the student-preferred channels of communication, or in the case of email, that student must know you.

We can spend as much time as we like trying to decipher new web platforms like Facebook, MySpace, or even Twitter (for the super-savvy). However, these are only changes in the chosen channels of communication. To get to the root of the cause of “blanket email syndrome” ask yourself, how often do you read the entire newspaper? Most people don’t do that these days. There isn’t enough time in the day, and most of us would rather get a summary of topics we care about from CNN.com or another news service.

Super-involved students we meet (the extremely diligent) report that they know their inbox and particularly which emails are the mass emails. They will usually skim or delete the mass emails. They too, would much rather get straight to the pertinent information, or get a CNN.com update of their world. They aren’t complacent because they don’t care, they just require relevant communication. The biggest social network of students in the United States today is Facebook, with 65% of their users logging in every day. When a student logs in to Facebook, only the relevant information – information that pertains to the user alone – is instantly seen, and that’s interesting.

It is easy to get a student to read your first and second emails, but if they aren’t engaged by the content, then the tendency is to judge future incoming emails as superfluous, boring, or even a waste of time. The name of the game is “relevance” and the more you are able to get relevant content to the right people, the more responsive and engaged the students will be.

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Peter Pereira is a guest blogger from the University of Arizona. Pete is an advisor for The Associated Students of the University of Arizona (ASUA) and has been spearheading a sustainability committee for the Arizona Student Unions trying to lessen the footprint left in the desert.

OrgSync hopes to help schools meet sustainability goals by offering the ability for online forms, calendars, surveys, and message boards. As part of our efforts we asked Pete to write a series of blogs entries as a practitioner trying to make his campus green.

Here is what Peter has to say about sustainability:
ACUI has recently come out with a document for professionals entitled “Sustainability Smarts: Best Practices for College Unions and Student Activities.” Topics covered include sustainability rating systems, college tours, sustainability blogs, fair trade, green cleaning, and so much more. It is available via their web site and can be viewed as either a web page or downloaded as a PDF (please don’t print it).

The document contains a lot of information and looks great. They give a lot of “best practices” examples that any institution can adopt if they are interested in learning about sustainability efforts. The only drawback for me is that it is about 70 pages long. I personally lack the attention span to read that many pages in one sitting. However, there is an index so you can skip around if there is a specific topic you want to read about such as fair trade products.

You can find the document on ACUI’s web site: www.acui.org

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