The Office of the Student Union will promote the use of and train students for CollegiateLink, an online social networking program for student organizations, this spring after more than a year of inactivity with the program.CollegiateLink is designed to help student organizations better communicate with other organizations and to make it easier to notify students about campus events and activities. The Office of the Student Union will require all student organizations to use the program.

Marilyn Gonzalez, assistant director of student life, said incoming freshmen and students new to Nicholls are among those who may benefit from the program, as they may not know what the campus has to offer. With CollegiateLink, students can receive information on how to join student organizations.

CollegiateLink’s interface is similar to that of social networking Web sites like Facebook and Myspace. The program will allow users to communicate with members of their organization and others, post flyers about upcoming events and track student involvement. “Every organization has to have some kind of Web presence,” Gonzalez said.

Each page on CollegiateLink can include discussion boards, group rosters, student surveys, recent group activity and other information pertaining to student organizations. The program includes the option to either browse or search a specific organization’s name to pull up desired information. The “public flyerboard,” a bulletin board on the program’s home page, will showcase the latest events and information posted by the University’s various organizations.

Melvin Harrison, assistant director of the Student Union, said the program would also act as a storage site. “Organizations don’t always have a lot of office space,” Harrison said. “Sometimes when documents are passed from hand to hand, they may get lost or destroyed.”

The University purchased CollegiateLink for about $9,000 in 2008 with funds from the student technology fee, but the program is still in the pilot stage, Gonzalez said. Changes in CollegiateLink’s administrative role also delayed the program’s progress. Harrison said Nicholls’ CollegiateLink is still being modified.

“We’re making the necessary adjustments so that it works well for the students,” Harrison said. “We’re trying to further explore what this program can do. By exploring more, this will make the student organization component of student life much easier and efficient.”

The Office of the Student Union will begin promoting CollegiateLink Nov. 10 to student organizations, beginning with an informative session in Le Bijou Theater. Training sessions will be held for student organization leaders until Nov. 20.

Next semester, the Office of the Student Union will promote the program to the students to raise awareness. The proposed deadline for all Nicholls student organizations to complete the mandatory registration for CollegiateLink is Jan. 30.

To view the current build of Nicholls’ CollegiateLink, go to http://nicholls.collegiatelink.net.