Starting this fall semester, BYUSA will be using its new Involvement Hub to help students get involved with clubs, departments and organizations they’re interested in.
According to Sean Rico Fisher, BYUSA vice president of communications, the Involvement Hub was designed to solve a saturation problem students were facing on campus: there were far more students who wanted to get involved in BYUSA than there were places to put them.
“People would come in, but we’d have nowhere meaningful to place them,” Fisher said. “We’d still place them somewhere, like on an existing team, but there wouldn’t be much work for them to do, and so they’d fizzle out, lose the fire and not really want to get involved because it wasn’t worth their time.”
Students will now be able to go to the Involvement Hub and list their interests, skills, major and other relevant information. BYUSA will work with organizations and clubs throughout the university to get each individual student involved with an organization that best fits them.
“BYUSA exists to give students leadership opportunities,” Fisher said. “We use our purpose to help the computer science department, the art department and all the other areas, and help them with this process, because it’s the reason we exist in the first place. We work together and use each others’ strengths.”
Students will be able to go directly to the BYUSA office to get involved. BYUSA will also have a tent on campus that will move weekly, where students can obtain useful information.
Brandon Beck, president of BYUSA, said setting up the Involvement Hub has proven challenging.
“A lot of the work right now is finding out what opportunities there are and trying to find out the best way to communicate with them,” Beck said. “We have an entire area of the office dedicated to finding opportunities and building connections with these groups so we can pass people on to them.”
BYUSA’s Involvement Area is an evolution of their old Administration Area. Beck felt the Administration Area would be more useful if it was focused on the student population as a whole rather than on internal business. The Administration Area became externally focused and renamed to the Involvement Area.
The Involvement Hub will be tested out during summer term and be running at full capacity starting fall semester.
The Involvement Hub will be broken down into three areas. The first area is recruiting, which focuses on educating students on what the Involvement Hub is and pushing students toward it. The second area is placement, which is a one-on-one service to help students get what they want out of BYU. The third area is hub management, which monitors logistics and networks with organizations outside of BYUSA.
Brandon Sookhoo, vice president of the Involvement Area, said this has never been done before at BYU.
“Nobody is passing anything on to me to help me out. I’m kind of starting from scratch, that’s the hardest part,” Sookhoo said. “It’s easy when someone’s tried something, failed or succeeded, that they can pass on to us. … But once we’ve tried everything out, it’s really going to be successful.”
Sookhoo also believes the Involvement Hub will have a big impact on campus life.
“Just imagine if everyone on campus was involved with something,” Sookhoo said. “We’re going to be sending people out into the world that have better social networking connections and stronger skill sets. … This could be a drastic change for the entire university.”
