OrgSync would like to announce our Implementation Webinar Series in June. We will focus on two campuses, one large and one small, who have already established the implementation process on their campus. They will share their best practices, successes, challenges, and suggestions for making the transition to OrgSync.

Our large campus implementation model will be on Thursday, June 11 at 1:00 EST and will feature Deborah Felder of the Student Organization Resource Center at North Carolina State University. NCSU began working with OrgSync last summer and developed a marketing plan to increase awareness of OrgSync to their 500+ student organizations and 31,000 students. Deborah has been an instrumental partner in helping define best practices for implementation and providing helpful feedback and suggestions for our new developments. Sign up for the large campus webinar.

We will feature our small campus implementation webinar on Wednesday, June 24 at 1:00 EST. Our feature presenter will be Rebecca Delo, Assistant Dean of Students for Student Life and Leadership Development at Muskingum College. Muskingum also joined the OrgSync family last summer, and Rebecca was very proactive in establishing the student organization registration process through OrgSync, as well as successfully attaining a high level of student adoption on her campus across their 100 organizations and 1500 students. Sign up for the small campus webinar.

We hope that our new clients and anyone who could benefit from these free webinars will attend! Please contact us with any questions.

The landscape at the University of Alabama is a testament to the concept of “integrative learning,” and the University’s Quad exhibits this quality.  Whereas one half of the area is open, the other half is tree-filled and covered with shade and benches. This is the formula for the perfect student experience, in which, the tree-covered area can be seen as the student’s academic life, and the open side as their extra-curricular endeavors.

Integrative learning is an interdisciplinary process involving student activity both in and outside the classroom. In an academic setting, students are required to attend classes ranging from forty people to over four hundred people; all of whom are watching a powerpoint presentation or listening to an impersonal lecture. However, there must be a manner in which to convey knowledge that is captivating and stimulating to a student that compels them to engage their studies in a fun and informative manner- enter OrgSync.

OrgSync is a new and revolutionary online tool for the total management of student organizations and their members.  OrgSync incorporates integrative learning techniques to continue what academia begins, but further helps student organizations effectively communicate, and especially in the campus residence halls.

As an example, take the Blount Undergraduate Initiative at the University of Alabama,which is a living-learning community that houses its scholars.  Blount is not just a residence hall, it is also an academic building with classrooms on the first floor where Blount scholars go for their foundational courses.  One professor, and all of the Teaching Assistants/Graduate students involved in those classes live in Blount, so at any point in the day, students can go to their instructors and ask questions. Not only are students afforded the ability to have open and personal dialogue with their professors, but the students are also encouraged to socialize and foster discussion among themselves for a fully integrated approach.  Academic or recreational topics are welcome in a large open forum known as the “Lobby,” and this peer-to-peer learning can be observed on a daily basis.

Having an area where everyone in the community can come together and collaborate allows for the furthering of knowledge in an otherwise social setting. Alex Wilson, a resident of Blount, said, “Living in Blount—a living-learning community—has deepened my understanding and furthered my studies of all things academic; in turn, I am made aware of world events, politics, and other activities that exist outside the classroom. This knowledge makes me a better-rounded student.”

Implementing the organizational measures of OrgSync for student interest groups on the campus of UA furthers the communication between these groups and the faculty.   Open communication increases the effectiveness of organizations such as the Blount program, and facilitates an integrative learning experience.

During the month of February, OrgSync started working with many new campuses from coast to coast.  We are extremely excited to welcome the University of Alabama – Birmingham, Arizona State University, Florida International University, Pace University @ Pleasantville-Briarcliff, University of the Incarnate Word, Adelphi University, Denison University, California State University @ Dominguez Hills, The City College of New York, Saint John’s University, and the University of Colorado @ Denver.  Together these schools account for approximately 150,000 students in over 1,900 organizations.

At Arizona State University, OrgSync will become the primary management tool for over 700 student organizations. “As one of the largest universities in the country, we have an extensive network of clubs and organizations that will benefit greatly from the organizational tools OrgSync offers” states ASU Assistant Director for Student Development, Jennifer Stultz; “OrgSync will not only help our individual clubs and organizations grow, but will also help them better integrate with one another and into the larger ASU community.”

To emphasize the importance of getting members involved on campus, OrgSync offers an unlimited number of online training webinars to students and faculty members.  OrgSync also includes an onsite training session with every initial purchase of the OrgSync platform.  The onsite trainings are very effective at helping organizations transition to a newer, more efficient method of communication. So far this spring, we’ve conducted onsite trainings with hundreds of leaders from The University of Alabama, St. John’s University, Bowling Green University, and Sacramento State University in conjunction with their respective spring leadership conferences.

As members of the OrgSync community, users from these schools will have the opportunity to provide feedback about the platform and drive future developments.  We look forward to working closely with each of these schools to provide them with a cost-saving, state-of-the-art management platform they can be proud of.

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.

OrgSync recently started working with the Student Activities office at California State University, Bakersfield (CSUB). This is the fourth CSU campus to take advantage of OrgSync’s tools and services. San Bernardino, San Marcos, and Sacramento have also provided their student organizations access to OrgSync’s portal system. From the CSU system, 61,000 students and over 530 student organizations are now going to improve communication for their members and administration.

“They have created an online community that is user-friendly for students, cost effective for campuses, and provides a structure by which busy Student Affairs administrators can leverage their time…”

Mark Hartley

Director, Student Leadership & Development

California State University, San Bernardino

The California State System has made a commitment to helping the environment by reducing paper usage on its campuses. OrgSync will support sustainability efforts by providing online promotion of student organization and club activities.  OrgSync will also replace paper forms with an online forms module.

Bakersfield has started implementation and training, taking advantage of OrgSync’s unlimited training by conducting separate training sessions for student officers and university administrators. They are holding multiple training opportunities for all of their student organization leaders. It is with great excitement that we welcome Bakersfield into the OrgSync family as we look forward to building a strong lasting relationship with them and all of our clients.

You can read the CSU Bakersfield press release here