For students at Allegheny College, the My Allegheny newsletter, Instagram and flyers in the Henderson Campus Center have been primary sources to learn about the extracurricular activities campus has to offer. Now, there’s a new method entering the mix.
Engage — which has been in the works since the fall of 2022 — is a program run by Anthology, a company that hosts software for colleges and other institutions of higher education.
Engage will allow student organizations to have one dedicated space to advertise their events and recruit new students, according to Assistant Dean of Student Leadership and Engagement Eric Stolar
“One of the issues we are seeing is that folks might be feeling that there wasn’t a lot going on on campus and they couldn’t figure out what to do,” Stolar said. “But on our end, we knew student organizations that are constantly programming, constantly hosting events, meetings, going off campus to places but people are having trouble finding that information.”
Stolar said he envisions Engage helping students relieve the pressure of having to do all the legwork to get involved on campus.
“It also means if you are bored on a random Thursday and don’t know what is going on, you can just pull Engage up and see that Outing Club has a cool excursion they are still accepting sign-ups for,” Stolar said.
Bike Share President Isaiah Davidson, ’25, said he really likes the idea of all the clubs having a central page where everybody can access events and club resources.
“Something I really like about Engage on the club leadership end of things is putting internal documents on Engage,” Davidson said. “For Bike Share, we have a big inventory because we have a lot of bike repair stuff and tools, and it would be really nice if we could get that list of stuff that we have on Engage.”
Bike Share Treasurer Emily Tekelenburg, ’24, recalled her personal experience of glancing over club events on MyAllegheny.
“I am not looking got events on MyAllegheny as much as I would a platform that is dedicated to events,” Tekelenburg said. “Instagram is always an easy one to communicate with students because you have that visual way of communicating with people. I know I am a visual communicator so I think they are going to be similar, but you are able to diffuse more information over Engage than you are on Instagram.”
Tekelenburg said one way Engage can be improved is by having finance requests be submitted through the platform.
“It would streamline the process for ASG (Allegheny Student Government) immensely,” Tekelenburg said. “It is definitely an area where ASG’s connection to Engage could be improved upon and that would make it a lot easier for treasurers to request funds and also have a more solid understanding of how financing a club works.”
Stolar said that he will be working with ASG to get some finance information on Engage and will be improving the website based on where they notice weak spots.
“When we log into Engage, we have the highest level of permission, so certain things students see we won’t see because we skip it automatically,” Stolar said. “I don’t get to see the student side of the website, so sometimes I am creating things and just hoping it works and have to wait until I hear how students are looking at it.”
Dean for Student Life Trae Yeckley added that improvements will be made to the site if students notice something is not working.
“If students can give us feedback on what needs to be improved, that would be incredibly helpful,” Yeckley said. “If students notice something with the website that isn’t working the way they expect it to work or that they think should work, to let Eric (Stolar) know so that we can get in to fix it.”
Some of the struggles with Engage have to do with the site being new for students, which means there is less activity on the site as it waits to gain traction.
Bike Share Secretary Julia Sonen, ’24, said she noticed that the involvement in Engage is uneven, with some clubs heavily engaging in the platform while others are not.
“Some clubs have put every single meeting on the platform, so if you look at the events page, it is filled with meetings for these two clubs for the rest of the year,” Sonen said. “ I would want for a way to sort between regular meetings and events because it is something that I haven’t been able to figure out how to do and it is a little limiting.”
As Engage gains more active users, it will continue to alter and enhance the ways in which students interact with the campus community.
“I hardly ever like using Instagram and the only reason I go on there is because I am checking what clubs are doing,” Davidson said. “I would much rather do that on a website than on social media.”