This semester, the university released Campus Quad, a new mobile application that connects students to extracurricular life on campus by sending notifications about events and meetings for clubs and organizations.

Georgetown and Stanford University are the first two campuses to incorporate the app.

“[Georgetown students] have the chance to help us create a platform that students across the country can use,” Campus Quad founder Frances Cairns said. “I’m doing this because I think students deserve the right to have mobile access in a modern world and my goal is to enable that and we are waiting to hear what students have to say.”

The app is designed to change how student clubs and organizations interact with the student population.

“Basically there is a dashboard that shows you who is interacting with your content. For clubs and organizations, it’s a really powerful tool. … It’s real time activity and content flowing back and forth,” Cairns said. “On large campuses, the information isn’t always easy to find. … We wanted to build and app that would serve the students and allow students in real time to explore what’s happening and different ways to navigate around campus.”

Specifically at Georgetown, the app aims to make it easier for student groups to promote their events.

“A lot of the times at Georgetown, it’s very tough to get a lot of people to come to your events. You can flyer and send out listserv emails all the time, but sometimes that still doesn’t generate a lot of attendance,” Student Activities Commission Chair Patrick Musgrave (COL ’16) said. “If this were to become used actively on campus, then groups would be able to advertise efficiently and get their message out more because everything is now online and students use their phones all the time.”

The app allows groups and organizations to create mobile flyers to promote an event and push them out to various social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

“It could definitely help out a lot of groups that are maybe smaller and sometimes struggle to have attendance to their events,” Musgrave said.

Ultimately, the app streamlines all the information into a singular feed. Students can customize their feeds by following various clubs and organizations.

“The app gives all groups equal access to all students, allows for users to filter based on interests and enables users to import events that interest them directly into personal calendars,” Georgetown University Student

Association Vice President Omika Jikaria (SFS ’15) wrote in an email.

The app will continue to be developed in order to incorporate features that are specifically tailored to Georgetown’s student body.

“One of the cool things we can do at Georgetown is to include information on the Google Maps and the Android Maps. It’s the first campus in the nation to have this,” Cairns said. “It will be a data layer with more specific photographs and information about how to navigate the campus. Our question is how can we make the app better and more robust to successfully navigate campus.”

Cairns said she is also very enthusiastic about hearing from students and addressing what students think works best.

“We are really interested in feedback and what we can do it improve it. We totally revamped the app based on the feedback we got at Stanford,” Cairns said.

While the application is still brand new to Georgetown, awareness on campus is growing, according to Musgrave. The app was introduced at Blueprint Training, a program for student leaders to learn about campus resources.

“Presidents have been reached out to about [the app]. It was mentioned at the Blueprint Training [for student leaders] and we will continue to encourage organizations to use the app,” Musgrave said. “Commissioners will also meet with all their groups to finalize budgets and we will push that as a way to promote it even more.”

Kirsten Craddock (COL ’15), club squash captain and vice president of the Undergraduate Bioethics Society, said that she thinks that the app will be an effective outreach tool.

“For both squash and the Undergraduate Bioethics Society, figuring out how to get fans or members to come to events is always a challenge. The way the app works on time and location sound like it could really improve accessibility to events on campus,” Craddock said. “I hope it lives up to expectations and that student groups use it.”