The office of the Associated Students of Pomona College (ASPC) has moved all ASPC, Pomona Events Committee (PEC) and Smith Campus Center (SCC) forms to the online system CollegiateLink this year in an effort to streamline budget requests, event registrations and other services provided by the organizations.
CollegiateLink is used on all 5C campuses, but Pomona is the only college to require that students fill out budget requests, event registrations and other administrative forms through CollegiateLink.
Director of SCC and Associate Dean of Students Chris Waugh said that CollegiateLink will give students greater flexibility when making budget requests for clubs and organizations or reserving rooms for events. It will also save paper and time for the ASPC office, he said.
“We think it’s easier for students,” he said. “Once it’s ingrained in the culture for students … they’ll be able to reserve things from their room at their leisure. The office doesn’t have to be open.”
Assistant SCC Director Ellie Ash-Bala said that she hopes students will begin to use some of CollegiateLink’s other features.
For example, CollegiateLink offers a co-curricular résumé builder that automatically updates students’ experiences based on the organizations that they are registered for on CollegiateLink.
“Part of what we want to use CollegiateLink for is to enhance and develop a student’s co-curricular experience on campus,” Ash-Bala said. “We are realizing that students are having these amazing experiences where they’re learning a lot of practical life tools all through student organizations. One of the things we’ve learned in partnership with the [Career Development Office] is that students are developing these skills but they don’t know how to translate that to a résumé or cover letter.”
Although CollegiateLink provides many services, some students have said that the website lacks user-friendliness.
“It takes five clicks and a login to get from a link to what you’re actually trying to look at,” ASPC Webmaster Joseph Long PO ’14 said.
Waugh said that he was aware of the problems students were having with CollegiateLink and that the ASPC office is working to fix the problems.
“The little that I hear is students saying, ‘I wish it didn’t take me so many layers to get in [to CollegiateLink],’ and we are working on that. We are constantly trying to work with CollegiateLink to eliminate some of the layers that folks have to go through to get to it,” Waugh said.
The problem, according to Ash-Bala, is that there is no single database for student profiles across the Claremont Colleges, so students have to be authenticated by a school website such as my.pomona.edu or portal.claremontmckenna.edu to securely access CollegiateLink.
“Going through the portals is pretty much a ‘pass-through’ system,” Ash-Bala said. “I’ve been told that a 5C student database is a project that has been kicked around but I don’t believe anyone is actively working on it right now.”
ASPC Vice President for Campus Activities Joseph Reynolds PO ’15 uses CollegiateLink frequently for PEC events and forms but said that it has flaws.
“It isn’t as intuitive as people want it to be, but it’s a step in the right direction,” Reynolds said. “It’s difficult to find something that works for us as the 5Cs because we all have different types of school structures.”
“Be open-minded and try to accept it, because it ain’t going nowhere for a long time,” he added.