Student Affairs launches three new committees

Student Affairs officials have taken steps this semester to connect students with top-notch internship opportunities and to create a tighter-knit campus community.

To accomplish these goals, officials created three new committees, each with a specific task — enhancing the university's internship tools, increasing various departments' social media presence and fostering campus-wide diversity.

One of the committees aims to create a one-stop, online location for students to browse available internships, according to Student Affairs Vice President Linda Clement. The new website — which does not yet have a launch date because the project is just beginning — would link material from the Career Center to information from each academic program at the university, some of which require students to have an internship under their belt before they graduate.

After speaking with employers at this fall's Career Fair, which garnered about 4,950 attendees, up 16 percent from the past two years, Clement said she wanted to improve the university's internship networking system year-round, as these opportunities are essential to finding a job.

"A lot of students have this information and a lot don't, so this lays out the territory so students can see what they can do. It would be one place you can go to navigate the campus from the internship perspective," said Student Affairs Internship Task Force co-chair Donna Hamilton.

At the beginning of next semester, the team will present recommendations to Provost Ann Wylie and Clement, according to Hamilton, who is also the undergraduate studies dean.

And as social media continues to be of increasing importance to higher education, the Student Affairs new social media team is making strides to help departments across the campus improve their online presences, according to Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs Warren Kelley.

"We see how important social media is to how students engage and are social with each other, and we also know large numbers of students still have difficulty finding their place on this campus and finding others to interact and engage with," said Kelley, who created the team in July.

Student Affairs coordinator Zimri Diaz, who is now heading the effort, said all the division's departments should mimic the avid social presence of Stamp Student Union, the Department of Transportation Services and Dining Services.

"We feel a lot of departments are doing a great job. … They have a great social media presence," Diaz said. "And we recognize a lot of students are utilizing those social media platforms, and we want to be reaching out to them where they are."

And as the division focuses on "setting goals" for various departments' use of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, some students said they are noticing social media's influence on their education.

Freshman letters and sciences major André Artis said one of his professors opts to use Skype and ooVoo — free video messaging services — to communicate one-on-one with students.

"If I have a question, you can have a discussion [over Skype] instead of just sending emails back and forth, and with that, you can really learn more," Artis said.

However, another student in Artis' class, letters and sciences major RaVaughn Green, said he hasn't quite gotten used to the idea of communicating with professors online.

"People are not used to older people knowing too much about this social Internet networking," he said, adding, "It's weird, cause [our professor] would just be in his house, Skyping me."

Corresponding with Kumea Shorter-Gooden's appointment as the new chief diversity officer, Kelley also charged a Student Affairs Diversity Committee with exploring ways for the division to help support university-wide community-building.

"What we want to do is … work harder to create connections between communities and lower barriers and foster connections between students who are different," he said.

"Most of us here are very proud of where the campus has come in terms of diversity," Kelley said. "In some ways, it's fabulous for people like me to be here and see where it used to be and where it is now."

Several students, such as sophomore English major Anne Richard, said they are unsure what measures this committee could talk to unite the student population.

"Even if we have the diversity in numbers, we still have a lot of self-segregation on the campus," she said. "Maybe if they gave groups more opportunities to step out of that, it'd be cool. But I don't know how they'd go about doing that."

lurye@umdbk.com