Orgsync Blog

Guest Blogger: Angelica Quicksey, Campus Liaison for Claremont McKenna College

In a 2007 New York Times article, Thomas Friedman, author of The World is Flat, called green the “new red, white, and blue.”  He claimed that environmental awareness and activism has become a central topic on Main Street but that we, particularly my generation, still need a greater understanding of and commitment to truly being green.

Start a Green Initiative on your Campus!

On the contrary, the green movement has been gaining momentum on college campuses around the nation for some years now, and today it continues to grow stronger. The next generation is in fact doing more than ever before to create a greener campus and graduating students carry this ideology into the world.

Since its introduction in 2006, 657 institutions have signed the American Colleges and University Presidents Climate Commitment. These institutions have agreed to completing an emissions inventory, creating an action plan and target date for becoming climate neutral, and taking immediate steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Often times, such commitment does not stem from the president’s office but originates among student’s themselves. Most schools have environmental clubs, which spearhead many of the initiatives taken at their respective institutions. Going tray-less in dining halls; reducing energy and water use in dorms; bike sharing programs; these are only a few examples of the slew of environmental-friendly activity that is taking place on college campuses around the U.S.

In addition to these more standard methods, some students have taken more creative approaches:
•    Students at the University of Cincinnati for example, set up an entire farmers market on their campus to promote local food.
•    Claremont McKenna Students took a particularly interesting approach and hosted a party called “Save the Ales,” in hopes of having a positive impact on the decrease in hops growth due to global warming.

Indeed, students play a vital role in increasing the movement to “Go Green.” Beyond these examples, students participate in panels to give long-term direction to their campuses. Such plans integrate sustainability into long-range models for campus development. Today, as campuses continue to grow, build, and expand, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Certification seems to be almost an epidemic. Such commitment to sustainable structures on campuses serves to show that students not only have a dedication to a green present, but a sustainable future.

Image originally found at UCSB Sustainability.

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Guest Blogger: Evelyn Wang, former OrgSync Marketing Intern, Student at the University of Texas at Austin

As I grow older and hopefully wiser, I have come to the conclusion – communities matter. Before coming to college, I never fully comprehended the importance of having a group of friends and belonging to a community. Not to say, I didn’t have friends before college, but from elementary to high school my classes were filled with the same 30 students. Everything was familiar and structured; I knew where I belonged and fit in.

However, everything changed after graduating high school. We all went our separate ways – different colleges and different life paths. From my class, I was one of the three people that went to The University of Texas at Austin. When I arrived at UT, things were certainly different. I felt like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, and I was definitely not “in Kansas anymore.” Like most freshman, I had a difficult time adjusting to college. Actually, that might be an understatement. I had an extremely difficult time adjusting to college. Everything about it – the unfamiliarity, the people, the campus size, the crowded sidewalks and hallways, all the idle time I had, and the absolute lack of freedom from not having a car in Austin, it spun my world around.

As a freshman, I would have never thought I’d stay at UT long enough to graduate, let alone miss UT. But here I am, attending my last semester at UT, a bit disappointed that my college career is almost over.

So, how did I manage to turn things around, succeed and have a different opinion about UT? In hindsight, it was definitely the people I connected myself to through the communities I joined my first year in college. By joining a Freshman Interest Group and an organization called Christians On Campus, I was able to meet and befriend people who shared my interests that would ultimately be the support I needed to succeed at UT.

Student groups provide a sense of belonging.

With encouragement from these friends, I soon joined a business club, the McCombs Diversity Council and was able to expand my network and become more involved in school. I can say with absolute certainty I would NOT have continued my studies at UT if it were not for my involvement in these groups. I would be living at home in Dallas, attending UTA, never leaving my comfort zone, and definitely not growing as a person.

The three student organizations I joined early on helped me form a group of friends and become a part of a community. I met peers that helped me enjoy my college experience, and who have probably influenced and impacted my life in ways I will never know. This was essential to my development as a student and in many ways saved my college career. Student organizations and communities on campus matter more than most people realize. Connections keep people growing and developing, and I was certainly no exception.

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Glen Baumgart

Today’s Guest blogger is Glen Baumgart, a longtime friend of mine in higher education. Glen has been working with higher education community engagement programs for over 12 years, and  currently serves as the Director of the Volunteer and Service Learning Center at The University of Texas at Austin.

If you work in higher education, then you have heard this line before, “I learned more outside the classroom than in the classroom” as students reflect on what they have learned and how they have grown. There is a lot of truth to that statement. In the classroom, students wrap their minds around theories, concepts, lessons, and content. But it is outside the classroom in student organizations, internships, community service activities, leadership programs, and other experiences where students are challenged with putting this new knowledge into action. And its not just putting knowledge to action, but integrating this new knowledge into the fabric of their lives, their morals, values, goals, and social interactions.

Universities and colleges seem to be well aware of this. Look at any institution of higher learning, and you will see a number of professional positions aimed at outside the classroom learning and programming. And the learning is very intentional. Ask any leadership, housing, community service, career, or programming staff what students learn through their programs, and they are sure to rattle off a laundry list of learning outcomes. But ask how that learning is measured, and you would likely hear staff mention a lack of assessment, or mention reliance on evaluation surveys or on quick reflection discussions. The assessment or measure of learning seems much less rigorous than that of an academic course with its grades, assignments, measures, and evaluations.

But it is possible to beef up the rigor of co-curricular programs in a way that matches the rigor often seen in academic coursework. To do this, we start by looking at the abundant research on college classroom learning. We know what works, and can identify the most important elements in classroom instruction that lead to learning. So, lets apply what works to achieve learning outcomes in the classroom, and apply them to our co-curricular programs.

The following components are used most often by teaching effectiveness professionals in higher education and used in research on classroom learning to help faculty improve their course structures. Lets use these elements, but adjust them to fit or co-curricular programs. Think of it as creating a co-curricular syllabus:

1. Identify the learning outcomes

Sounds easy, but this is likely the hardest part. Most college courses only have three to five learning outcomes – understand this theory, know this lab skill, etc. Three to five, and that’s when the instructor has three hours of student attention per week. In co-curricular terms, its wise to start with just one specific learning outcome. What is the most important learning outcome your program teaches?

2. Evaluation or measurement system

How will the student know they have met the desired outcomes? Try to describe in measurable terms what the learning outcome would look like. Is there a certain behavior? Do students respond to a survey in a certain way? How would they demonstrate the desired outcome?

It is important to start with these two components. It is from here that one build the rest of the co-curricular syllabus.

3. Students MUST understand the learning goals

This is the most missed component in college courses, but one of the most important. If your goal is for students to learn a specific outcome, then tell them that at the start. Students who understand the goals from the start are more likely to cue into the instructional techniques. A good practice for this is to make sure the outcome is part of the recruitment / application process.

4. Estimate prior knowledge

What do the students know in regards to your learning outcome prior to joining the program? A simple survey or questions on an application can help you understand where your students are coming from. In course lingo, we call these “prerequisites”, and most co-curricular programs have them too, but are seldom stated. What experiences or knowledge should the students in the program bring with them? If a certain prior knowledge is important, then that should be part of your recruitment or advertising.

5. Estimate motivation and interest in the learning outcome

Any course should be designed to peak the student’s interest by not being too difficult, but not being too easy either. This is why the prior knowledge is so important. Students must have some motivation or interest in the topic, otherwise it unlikely they will learn. This will help in designing the logistics of the program to help determine what might be boring, or what might be overwhelming. How does your program maximize students’ interest? How will it keep them motivated to finish?

6. Now develop the actual instruction logistics

Huge mistake by instructors and program coordinators alike, we tend to jump into the program’s logistics before we think about learning outcomes, measures, prior knowledge, or motivation. We tend to start creating a program, then looking back to what is being learned. Try, and its hard to do, but try to answer the first five components first before any thoughts on how you’ll do it.

7. Identify the learning moments

Another often missed component in course construction as well as co-curricular. As you plan the instruction, think hard about when instruction is actually taking place. If it’s a course, then you know you have time in a classroom when the instructor teaches, and that assignments must be done for grades. So, it is during these times you know students are interacting with material. In co-curricular it is much harder to identify the time. Some groups meet only once a week. So, during that hour meeting, when is it and under what circumstances do you know students are paying attention to instruction? Is there a time for reflection? What about online chats? Tweets? If you can identify the most likely time the student learns, the more impactful the program will be.

8. Evaluate and adjust

Look at your measurement instruments, your surveys, and make adjustments for next time. Try to be creative in your evaluation. Lets say your learning outcome was the understanding of a certain leadership concept. Then send the students an online survey during the following semester. See if they still have that understanding. If so, success! Now you can really say that they learned that concept.

These steps are often used to help increase the effectiveness in college courses. Shifting them a little, one can use them to help ensure a rigorous learning experience in the co-curricular program.

Also See our interview with Glen when we were on the UT campus this past summer.

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“Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country”, declared President Kennedy.

Ghandi implored, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has,” noted Margaret Mead.

These often used quotations are quite popular within the student affairs community because they can be interpreted and applied to the work that we do with students on a daily basis. It should then come as no surprise that a fair amount of institutions of higher education have developed or are currently developing programs solely dedicated to community service and service-learning, most especially when referencing the quotations above.

These programs are designed to target the issues affecting the communities in which the institutions are located. For example: 1) The Volunteer and Service Leadership Center at the University of Texas works with non-profit organizations in Austin, Texas  2) The Arizona Blue Chip Program at the University of Arizona works with individuals and groups in the Tucson, Arizona community

These two institutions are dedicated to not only serving their local communities, but instilling in the students an understanding about why service to others is important and invaluable. The faculty and staff of programs and centers similar to the two listed above are taking initiative to give back to their communities.

In light of President Obama’s “United We Serve” campaign coupled with Americorps, the idea and valuation of community service is garnering more attention. Educating students about the need for service should be commended and lauded, not devalued because it does not apply to ‘in-classroom’ experiences. As such, service to one’s community can be related to ‘in-classroom’ learning because depending on the class, it can always be asked, “where does the need for service originate?” – which relates to business, sociology, economics, and political science just to name a few. Hence, an influx in service-learning programs that not only allow students to perform community service, but ties in the academic component of evaluating the need and purpose for why the service was performed in the first place.

These are exciting times ahead in the field of higher education and student affairs due to the increase in service-learning and community service programs that address the needs of not only the surrounding institution’s community, but the state, country, and globe.

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In today’s society, a college education is more important than ever, and there is no shortage of institutions for students to choose from. So, how do prospective students make up their mind? What draws them to one institution over another? More than anything else, they look for a place they can call home. They consider what the University has to offer them. Student involvement in the campus community is vital to a successful college life. Prospective students don’t want to attend an institution where they will be isolated, and have nothing to do but study. While it’s true that students are looking for a good education, without a comfortable environment, learning won’t be possible.

The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE Studies) shows that student success is directly linked to student involvement. NSSE measures student involvement in academic and co-curricular programs and activities, and the effect they have on students. According to NSSE, the more involved students are in an institution, the more invested they will be. The higher the student involvement level the higher their grades are and the more likely they are to re-enroll for the next semester. Highly-engaged students are more likely to re-enroll than less-engaged students. An institution that offers inviting options for student involvement is also creating free, word-of-mouth marketing. The more a student likes an institution the more likely they are to promote and recommend it to others. Among institutions that scored appropriately in the NSSE student involvement and engagement study 93 percent of students reported having a favorable image of their college.

Because student involvement is so important, it is vital for an institution to create a culture, not just a campus. When students are involved and engaged, they feel like they are a part of something. This sense of belonging fosters loyalty and pride in their institution, as well as academic achievement, and community involvement. There are five benchmarks laid out by NSSE to gauge a successful student involvement environment.

These benchmarks are:
1. Sufficient level of academic challenge
2. Favorable amount of active and collaborative learning options
3. Quality faculty and student interaction
4. Abundant amount of enriching community interaction
5. Existence of a supportive campus environment.

Students who are involved devote more time and energy to academics, spend more time on campus, while participating actively in student organizations, and having more positive interactions with faculty and staff. All of this leads to a more productive educational environment that benefits every part of the institution. On the other hand, uninvolved students neglect their studies, abstain from extracurricular activities, spend little time on campus, and rarely contact faculty and staff. This lack of interest leads to a lack-luster college experience.

Students are not the only ones to benefit from an engaged environment. Student involvement is often the catalyst for other institutional and community improvements. Faculty, staff, and the surrounding community all benefit from student involvement. From volunteering, to relaxed and free flowing conversation, the benefits are endless. But, meaningful and worthwhile student involvement does not just happen overnight, it’s an investment process that takes time, effort, and money. But this is an investment that has been proven to be worth the effort. Student involvement on campus is one of the quickest ways for students to become part of an institution’s community and create a personalized college experience.

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April 22, a Day to Think Green
Today is the world’s 39th annual Earth Day.  This is a time to reflect on your daily routine and ask yourself whether or not you can make [at least] a few minor adjustments to help minimize our negative impact to our planet earth.

2009 marks the beginning of The Green Generation Campaign.

It’s core principals are:
1. A carbon-free future that is based on renewable energy that will end dependency of fossil fuels, including coal
2. Increasing individual’s commitment to responsible consumption
3. Creation of a new green economy that lifts people out of poverty by
a. Creating millions of quality green jobs
b. Turning our global education system into a green one

Join OrgSync & Our Commitment to Saving the Earth, One Campus at a Time!
“Our users save thousands of sheets of paper annually.”-Clifton King, OrgSync Software Developer

By using OrgSync’s online forms to manage promotional and financial activity organizations are saving paper, and are not only saving money, but limiting the destruction of forests, and eliminating unnecessary waste.  Essentially, our users are saving the Earth.

Currently OrgSync users have saved over 33,000 sheets of paper through online form submissions!  This number does not include the paper our users save using OrgSyc’s online tools, such as our event and meeting attendance tool and our online invoice and receipt system.  Way to go OrgSync Users!

OrgSync Goes Green
OrgSync takes pride in implementing Green Initiatives into its company culture with simple eco-friendly habits that accumulate over time and work toward reducing toxic greenhouse gas emissions and conserving energy.  In a conscious effort to conserve gas, OrgSync encourages carpooling and does not send our booth materials separately to conference venues prior to our arrival.  Furthermore, we limit our paper use by telecommunicating with our employees and clients.  Also, energy saving light bulbs are used throughout our office and all monitors are turned off during non-office hours to limit unnecessary electricity usage.

Below are a few pointers on how to help further your campus’ Green Initiative:
1. Recycle paper, plastic, aluminum, electric waste such as cell phones and computer parts, printer cartridges
2. Generate a Compost
3. Educate others on the importance of your Green Initiative and how to get involved!
• The most important thing is to educate students on how their daily activities affect the earth and its inhabitants
• Your goal should be to develop    environmentally responsible individuals to help create a long term positive effect on the earth
• Provide your students with frequent opportunities to get involved in your efforts
• For instance, providing recycling bins around campus is a constant reminder for students of the importance of recycling
4. Buy Recycled Products
5. Address Concerns & Set Specific Goals for your campus
• Create a plan to increase your campus’ Green efforts
•Plan of action that you can realistically implement within one year

• What are the possible obstacles to your Green plan
• List sources/support
• List of possible rewards for participants
• Delegate tasks/director positions to specific committee members
• Ask yourself “How will we involve students?”

You can find more information on Earth Day & Green Initiatives at:
http://earthday.net/ednoncampusorganizersguide

www.gogreeninitiative.org

Happy Earth Day!

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Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos at SXSW

This past March, the SXSWi opening keynote speech, presented by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, highlighted the importance of developing a strong company culture and explained his company’s revolutionary vision of customer service.

As I listened to Tony’s presentation, I found myself inspired by the fact that Zappos’ adherence to company culture and core values helped land them on Forbes list of Top 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2009.

Zappos’ philosophy of success is similar to that of OrgSync’s in many ways. Above all, we believe strongly in adhering to company culture and core values. At OrgSync, our success is driven by three core values: 1) Giving the customer the largest stake in the future of the OrgSync platform, 2) Empowering organizational leaders through technology, and 3) Making positive contributions to our communities.

First, as a hosted solution, we believe that development of a premiere product is best accomplished by giving our clients the largest stake. Every month, we encourage our clients to meet with our in-house development team to discuss new product ideas and trends. Through this method of communication, our development team is able to quickly design and implement new features for the entire client base to use. Moreover, OrgSync recently released an Application Programming Interface (API) that will provide campus IT departments the flexibility to create automated processes based on the needs and requirements determined by the school or organization. OrgSync also has a 24/7 customer support line that clients are encouraged to call whenever they need a question answered.

Eric and Jeff at NCLC

Second, OrgSync seeks to empower organizational leaders through technology. The OrgSync team has a strong background in higher education, and involvement in campus organizations. In fact, the very idea to create the OrgSync solution was generated from our co-founders’ experiences in running multiple student organizations at The University of Texas at Austin. Members of the OrgSync team are also regular attendees of the International Leadership Association Global Conference, the National Collegiate Leadership Conference, which is hosted on OrgSync, and the Lone Star Ruby Conference. OrgSync’s involvement in these conferences expresses commitment to innovation and leadership that will best serve OrgSync’s client base.

Lastly, OrgSync aspires to make positive contributions to the Austin tech community, and the communities of its clients. In February, OrgSync sponsored the Austin Twestival hosted by media maven Michelle Greer. Also, earlier this year, our company organized a daylong social media campaign on Twitter to raise over $1500 for Clean Water, whose objective is to provide sanitary water to natives of Africa.

OrgSync’s Cayce Stone uses the phrase “Everybody wins!” to summarize the OrgSync philosophy. By adhering strongly to these core values, OrgSync to provides a solution that makes management of your organization more efficient.

That following Monday morning, I received an email from Tony detailing where I could find more information about Zappos culture. He informed me that a copy of the Zappos Culture book I had requested would be arriving at my doorstep soon, and also extended an offer to visit the Zappos headquarters next time I am in Las Vegas. Thanks again Tony for being an excellent role model!

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The 22nd Annual South by Southwest Music & Media Festival has begun! The OrgSync team will be exhibiting at the SXSW Interactive Festival this weekend at the Austin Convention Center. SXSW Interactive celebrates the best minds and the brightest personalities of emerging technologies. We will be at booth #710 on the fourth floor of the convention center in the Trade Show on Saturday & Sunday 12-6, and Monday 12-4. Please stop by our booth if you are planning to be at SXSW!

OrgSync will also be sponsoring the 3rd Annual Higher Ed MeetUp/TweetUp on Sunday night from 6:00-10:00pm at Buffalo Billiard’s on 6th & Brazo’s. Catch up with your colleagues in the education field and meet new friends at this great networking event. Also be sure and attend Brad J Ward and Dylan Wilbank’s panel on the “The Web In Higher Education: What’s Different?” this year at SXSWi.

We hope to see you at our SXSWi booth, The Higher Ed MeetUp/TweetUp and/or the panel discussion!

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As a past officer of a UT business student organization, I know the challenges of communicating with 120+ members on a moments notice. Any student organization officer can tell you, it takes time, effort and skill to know each member, obtain member preference information, and inform them of last minute event details and changes.

What is the solution to these timeless organizational communication challenges? Simply put, OrgSync. On one hand, this Austin based company, OrgSync, Inc., hosts a platform to equip universities with the tools to oversee and manage their students and student organizations. On the other hand, OrgSync’s platform can also be used by student leaders, like me, to manage our organizations, committees, members and events.

My executive council initially wanted to use our website and our forum to inform and interact with our members. One entire year was devoted to creating a new “user friendly” website, and in the end that idea was scrapped because of time consuming inefficiencies with updating web content on a continual basis. After all, we were not a computer science organization teaching our members how to write code to build and manage a website. Our main purpose is to mold our members into young professionals with leadership experience.

After realizing that our website would not be an efficient method of communicating with our members, we focused on communicating through email and sending our entire member list serve [very lengthy] weekly emails, which listed out all events’ detailed information. Needless to say weekly e-mails were very tedious and time consuming and were merely a band-aid to our communication problem.

As a student and an officer, I know the importance of being time efficient and cutting out unnecessary tasks. Our time consuming communication efforts could have been cut in half simply by using OrgSync’s platform.

OrgSync’s SMS/Texting tool could have been the quick and simple solution to informing our members of event updates and details. We would have never needed to dabble in finding, creating, and managing a forum that never held up to our standards. Instead, we could have used OrgSync’s poll feature to interact with our members and to obtain unbiased and anonymous opinions and feedback on events. We would have even had an alternative to the pesky weekly emails. With OrgSync’s event and meeting tools, any officer could have uploaded event information and segment event invitations by specifying which committees and members to invite to specific events and meetings.

Kennie Blanco a graduate from the McCombs School of Business and a past President of a student organization said, “Finding a centralized and user friendly medium of communication was difficult. Our website was never advanced enough to facilitate communication effectively… it was not very easy for a member to go online to find information or to even ask questions about an upcoming event.”

In fact, OrgSync offers everything suggested by this experienced officer. With the tools that its platform provides OrgSync efficiently facilitates communication within organizations. I would recommend it to any school and organization looking to have a higher level of efficiency and effectiveness when communicating and interacting with their constituency online.

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We are excited to welcome the University of Alabama, the University of North Texas and the University of Nevada at Reno to the OrgSync community. Jointly, these three universities will bring over 850 student organizations onto the OrgSync platform. We look forward to building great relationships on each one of these campuses and improving communications campus-wide!

“We are excited about providing all of our students a one-stop-shop for student organization management and a centralized place for students to get involved,” says Stacy Jones, Director of Student Leadership at the University of Alabama. Alabama plans to start the training process ASAP, followed by a full campus roll-out for all 250 student organizations. Stacy Jones has been working rigorously to bring the OrgSync platform to Alabama and is excited to start training and implementation.

The University of North Texas in Denton, TX has over 400 student organizations that will be using OrgSync to improve communication and organization management. “I am excited about everything that OrgSync will offer to our students. The entire program is going to help all aspects of campus, and the student body is ready for this move up in technology,” says Brooke Carter, Student Activities Coordinator at UNT.

Jason Entsming, Director of Organizations for the Student Government at Nevada, is especially excited to bring OrgSync to Nevada’s 200 student organizations. Having been mesmerized by OrgSync’s capabilities since Fall 2008, Jason is looking forward to implementing OrgSync for the Student Government to better communicate with and manage student organization needs. “Our students want and expect to be able to communicate online. OrgSync will allow us to setup an online community for our students and enhance their out of the classroom experience,” says Amy Koeckes, Coordinator of Clubs and Orgs at University of Nevada at Reno.

On behalf of the OrgSync team, I would like to wish all three of these schools a warm welcome to the OrgSync family!

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