5X will soon begin using a new standardized calendaring system with an improved look and enhanced functionality. The new university-wide Events Calendar will allow students, faculty and staff to stay up-to-date on events and activities, by placing all of their events, globally, in one place. Currently, organizers are required to submit requests on multiple websites to have their events included in the “What’s Up” calendar, FLASHperks, university calendar and department web pages. There will now be one central event submission form.
The Rationale
“Research shows that student success is amplified when students are engaged on campus and particularly when academic, personal and extracurricular involvements are reinforcing and meaningful,” says Shay Little, vice president of student affairs and project champion. “Having one, coordinated calendar system along with the FLASHperks program will elevate the student experience, support individual student’s engagement on campus and provide a platform for assessing the impact of co-curricular engagement.”
What It Means to Our Web Visitors: Customization
To improve the web visitor’s experience, the calendar will be customizable in FlashLine, where each university community member will be able to select preferred calendar categories.
On the public website at www.kent.edu/calendars, prospective students also will have the ability to filter on event category types to see what life is like at Kent State.
This additional functionality will allow individuals to take a closer look at the various extracurricular activities in which they are especially interested.
What It Means to Departments With Events
The divisions of Information Services, Student Affairs and University Relations collaborated to create the new Events Calendar, which provides a single portal where university community members responsible for promoting events can simultaneously submit for:
- Inclusion on their websites.
- Consideration for inclusion on the home page event feed.
- Consideration for inclusion on the www.kent.edu calendars page, which was redesigned as part of this project to provide prime real estate for event promotion. Divisions, departments and organizations can request to become a featured event in the slider found at the top of the page, via the event request form. Events are subject to University Communications and Marketing review and approval, and must meet the event calendar criteria.
- Request FLASHperks tied to events.
Not only does the new system provide faculty and staff an easy and efficient way to add events to the Events Calendar, but also the calendar will provide comprehensive reports by attendance, division, department and more.
Additional Information
Faculty and staff can register for an informational overview and training session. Two sessions will be offered on a monthly basis during August and September. .
The system will be managed by University Communications and Marketing and the Division of Student Affairs.
Meet the Team
The cross-divisional project team used a collaborative approach throughout the project’s research and discovery, development, testing, pilot, implementation and launch stages. The group was composed of:
- Sindu Bandari
- Barb Boltz
- Jared Boehm
- Thom Clark
- Marianne Cohol
- Lin Danes
- Kristan Dolan
- Jade Green Gamble
- Sameer Jaleel
- Sydney Jordan
- Mayank Ladoia
- Tom Mahon
- Nicole Neiss
- Anne Palmieri
- Mike Papania
- Tim Priester
- Sara Smith
- Julie Spotts
- Scott Stillisano
- Effie Tsengas