My Community and How You Can Engage It

If there’s one thing that college students like it’s being able to brag. This can be through a “top” internship, a good grade or simply praise for doing well.  I don’t know one student who does not like getting a paper or assignment back with positive feedback. I think that College departments should take advantage of this.

Showcasing students online

Departments should utilize blogs to showcase their students. To do so, there should be somewhere where students and faculty can submit recommendations for students that are doing well. If a university has a blog or another social media site, such as Facebook, They can showcase their students on that platform. All the university simply needs to do is share a picture of the student and the reason why the student is being recognized.

If the university, or even a department, chooses to write a blog they can share this blog across all other social media platforms as well. This will generate traffic back to their blog.

For example, there could be a monthly post on a platform for “Impressive Interns: (student’s name)”, “Skillful students: (student’s name)” or “Significant seniors: (student’s name)”. These posts can be fairly general and follow a simple template each time.

By doing this departments can motivate their students to continue to work hard by recognizing them when they do.

Who has done it

A great example of an organization that does this is the University of San Francisco’s communication department and their blog, “SPEAKING OF…”. This blog showcases students each month. For example, in January they had a “Student Shout-Out: Erin and Generation Citizen” and it this post they shared information about a student, Erin, and her internship experience. This encourages not only the student who was involved, but other students to get involved and find internships as well.

The impact

When a student is recognized this is something they can share with their friends, family and potentially future employers. Students may also feel inclined to share posts on the social media platforms they use, which will allow the university and department to receive even more exposure.

If universities, especially bigger universities take the time to recognize their students and their accomplishments on a timely basis I believe students will stay better motivated. Schools will also get more exposure, which is a win-win situation for all involved.