Here at Red Rover, student engagement is pretty much our raison d’être. From the moment a bright-eyed high school kid starts thinking about admissions essays, through the college years and beyond, we want to provide the tools and opportunities for students to get involved—to build relationships, to contribute, and to be successful. That’s why we do (metaphorical) synchronized cartwheels when we hear real-life stories of students using the Red Rover Student Directory to connect on campus.
This month we learned that Highlands Interactive Productions (HIP), the student activity programming board at Georgia Highlands College, saw attendance for a group retreat increase 25% after using Red Rover to reach out to new students.
In the words of John Spranza, Director of Student Life at GHC, “When I received the email notification that someone had joined [HIP] on Red Rover, I responded with a quick email telling them a little more about the organization and mentioned that we had a retreat scheduled for the first week of August. Classes did not start until mid-August, but I stressed in the email that they could attend the retreat and get a jump on participation with the group. The retreat was a planning/training/team-building weekend that would include some ropes course action and some white water rafting.
When the time came for the retreat, we had 20 students attend…and 5 were brand new freshmen that had yet to attend a class! These 5 students were ones that learned about the group from Red Rover, and then corresponded with me over email and Facebook following their orientation session.
So these five students were plugged in to the campus activity programming board before classes started, and became very active and valuable members of HIP during the course of that year… Something that I attribute directly to the use of Red Rover.”
