Student Life will be connecting Nicholls student organizations and its members with the spring launch of CollegiateLink, an online community for student involvement. Many college students are familiar with using Web sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, to track people and events and communicate with friends. CollegiateLink draws from the same idea, making organization-related information easily attainable, Marilyn Gonzalez, assistant director of International Student Services, said.

Student organization members will be able to communicate with one another, track their involvement in their organization, post flyers of upcoming events on a virtual bulletin board and learn about recent news and activities.

Students outside of active groups can use the online system to inquire about or join an organization.

“It’s a much easier, student-friendly and dynamic way to communicate directly with a group,” Gonzalez said. “There’s nothing else like this.”

The system will enable University administrators to track student involvement. There is no official count of students active in campus organizations. CollegiateLink will paint a true picture of how many students are involved in student organizations and who those students are. The University can use that information to seek resources to improve campus activities, Gonzalez said.

Without the link, students had to go through Student Life to learn more about an organization, making it difficult to obtain forms and information, Gonzalez said.

“We spent a lot of time calling students and gathering forms,” Gonzalez said. “We weren’t getting a good response.”

What Student Life wanted was a single information system that could manage and track student organizations and co-curricular programs online, Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez requested a grant in February that would fund the system. The 2008 Instructional Technology Support Grant was approved in June and included a three-year contract with CollegiateLink.

Groups that are currently active in student organizations will be the first offered access to the new system. Student life considers those organizations that have followed proper procedures and submitted necessary forms as active. Other organizations can join the link by contacting Student Life and requesting information, Gonzalez said.

To get the student organizations familiar with CollegiateLink, Student Life is hosting three training days in the Dell Lab of the Ellender Memorial Library from Nov. 18-20. One person from each organization is invited to attend the event to learn how to operate the information system.

Promotion outside of the organizations will target new students. Student Life will try to introduce CollegiateLink to freshmen and transfer students during orientation and by visiting the freshman studies classes and showing demos in the Bollinger Student Union, Gonzalez said.

“It’s going to be a job to get everyone on board with this,” Gonzalez said. “It requires student action. We really need students to ask questions and take an interest.