Client Services Corner – March 2011

March 1 2011, 12:35pm

In this issue:

Campus Spotlight: La Sierra Greek Best Practices Did You Know about our Design Services Upcoming Webinars and Trainings

Welcome to the launch of our new Client Services Corner blog series. We’re very excited to be sharing our insights, campus stories and upcoming webinars. If you’d like to be featured in this new regular series, feel free to contact us.

Campus Partner Spotlight: La Sierra University

In the Fall of 2010, La Sierra University in Riverside, California joined the OrgSync Family. This small, Seventh-Day Adventist university joined the OrgSync family with 50 organization portals for their roughly 1,850 students. Thanks to the passion and perseverance of Kim Canine, Director of Student Activities, La Sierra has grown to 79 organization portals with over 1,300 users in their community! As an alumna of La Sierra, Kim understood the needs of the university and saw the benefits that OrgSync could provide her alma mater. She was an evangelist in bringing the system to campus and has been extremely proactive in encouraging adoption. She has led training sessions for students and staff, distributed customized La Sierra/OrgSync “swag,” contributed a feature in the campus magazine about the system, and even hired an OrgSync intern to help manage the community!

La Sierra is an excellent example of how OrgSync can benefit an entire campus. Not only has Kim provided portals for all student groups and residence halls, but she has also started an initiative to engage faculty and staff as well. They have found creative ways for different departments on campus and academic units to utilize portals. Some of the departments utilizing OrgSync include: Biology, Music, Chemistry, Psychology, Health Services, Financial Services, the Learning Support Center and even Campus Security. La Sierra’s creative efforts can be a useful template for our campuses across the country. Their ingenious “Social portal for Faculty and Staff” allows them to interact with one another, creating an online teacher’s lounge. As a faith-based campus, they are also utilizing OrgSync for their many Spiritual Life programs and clubs and have expressed interest in OrgSync’s card swipe feature, so that they can track attendance at university worship services. OrgSync is lucky to have Kim and La Sierra as a Campus Partner. We are looking forward to our continued partnership and cannot wait to see what great ideas they have in the future!

Best Practices for Fraternity and Sorority Life Recently, OrgSync held Fraternity and Sorority Life Webinars for our Campus Partners. During these webinars, we discussed best practices for using OrgSync for a Fraternity and Sorority chapter, council and department perspective. Here are some highlights from these webinars:

Create OrgSync portals for each chapter, council, and Fraternity and Sorority Life Department. Host Recruitment Counselor Applications on OrgSync, so you are able to keep track of all submissions online. Encourage chapters to utilize the OrgSync Store as a convenient way for members to order t-shirts and tickets to events. Utilize registration forms with events to gather relevant information before the event and to provide readily available contact information. Store important officer documents, chapter bylaws, member handbooks and meeting minutes in the Files module. Create alumni and alumnae account groups to generate a list of leads for potential advisors as well as a potential member/prospective member account group to share information. Build officer applications, Fraternity and Sorority life award nominations, and social event registration forms in an online format in the Forms module.

Did You Know about our Design Services? Did you know that you have the ability to design a template website for each of your organizations on OrgSync? AND did you know that OrgSync will create a basic template design for you at no additional cost? There are 5 design templates to choose from. Just select which template you would like, and our designers will add your colors and logo/university name. Then, all of your student organizations can activate their websites and minimal editing or further design will be needed. Simply notify your Campus Consultant of your template selection and our designers will get to work! Here are some examples of the basic templates from other campuses:

Keep in mind also that if you have in house designers that can develop a more custom design for you, we can instruct them on how to build and enable this template from your umbrella. And, as always, if you would prefer to outsource the work to us, our design team is happy to develop a more custom design for you!

Upcoming Webinars The following are upcoming webinars open to anyone interested in learning how OrgSync can benefit your Student Government and Orientation efforts. Student Government Webinars

Wednesday, March 2 2 pm CST

Wednesday, March 2 6 pm CST

Orientation Webinars

Wednesday, March 9 2 pm CST

Thursday, March 10 12 pm CST

Upcoming On-Site Trainings

Darton College March 2 – 3

University of Wisconsin @ Stout March 6 – 7

Indiana State University March 24

view all upcoming OrgSync events