SC State Honors College students turn class projects into real-world solutions for advising, housing
Creative Inquiry course challenges Honors College students to develop practical, campus-focused solutions through research and project management
ORANGEBURG, S.C. — Students in the Dr. Emily E. Clyburn Honors College at South Carolina State University have produced a video series and a mobile app aimed at improving academic advising and the timeliness of residence hall repairs.
The Honors College students are members of a Creative Inquiry course and were divided into two groups. A Young Scholars group explored ways to make the academic advising process more effective, and a Dreamhouse group sought ways to improve the timeliness of on-campus residence hall repairs.
“There are many issues on campus and in the community that students can address if we facilitate that,” said Dr. Learie Luke, the course’s instructor and director of SC State’s Office of Global Engagement. “The Creative Inquiry course allows students to do that. We want them to use a project management approach and deal with a problem.
“I really believe that one day one of these students is going to come up with a solution to an issue that the university can adopt and, beyond that, that the community can adopt,” he said.
Young Scholars: Advising and course selection
The group developed a series of short videos to provide their peers with better knowledge of the advising process and correct course selection. The objective is to lessen delays in students completing degree requirements and help ensure that they graduate on time.
The videos covered the following topics: Utilizing Curriculum Sheets to Stay on Track; Utilizing the “Your Advisor and YOU” Pamphlet; and Meeting With Your Advisors: Dos and Don’ts.
Dreamhouse: Residence hall repairs
The Dreamhouse group includes Matthew Williams, Lauren Johnson, A’Miya VanBuren, Natyra Duncan and Imanii Gray.
The group developed a Bulldog Repair App to improve communication and completion times surrounding on-campus residence hall repairs.
With the help of the university’s Information Technology staff, the group developed an app that allows students to upload pictures, videos and descriptions of maintenance problems. The app also allows university maintenance staff to inform students when repairs will be conducted and upload pictures of completed repair work.
Students will also be able to rate the repairs in the app. The app contains three dashboards that allow tracking and analytics and enable the transmission of emergency work orders, such as those associated with a gas leak.
The Dreamhouse group has beta-tested the app, which they hope the university will consider using. The student groups gave PowerPoint presentations of their projects on April 27 at Belcher Hall.
‘We really hope our prototypes help the university’
Thompson and Ihsan Omer are co-chairpersons of the Young Scholars group.
“We chose this project because every semester there’s someone complaining about not getting into the right class, or they missed their class and now it’s only offered next year. This kept happening a lot, and we started looking into it. Each of us had different issues with advising,” said Ihsan Omer, 23, a senior computer science major from India.
Thompson, 21, a junior business economics major from Mobile, Alabama, described the input the group received from SC State students.
“Many students that I talked to have issues with the advising process: not knowing key information that they need, not being able to schedule meetings with their advisor, a whole host of things. So, we saw this topic as something that we should address, especially as we are going into graduating ourselves,” Thompson said.
The student group conducted a short survey among students on whether they thought they needed an advisor and why. They also pulled ideas from the “Your Advisor and YOU” pamphlet created by a group of students previously enrolled in the Creative Inquiry class.
“All these resources are available on campus. There’s the ‘Your Advisor and YOU’ pamphlet and there are curriculum sheets everywhere, but it’s still hard for students to utilize them. We really want to emphasize that they should go to their advisor not just to register for classes, but for everything,” Ihsan Omer said.
In the video series, the group broke down the steps in a visual way.
“We’re also planning to hand out this flow chart,” Thompson said. “It’s just creating another added recommendation to the student. This is the video, this is the flow chart — they all come together.
“The flow chart really emphasizes the number of times you would need to refer back to your curriculum [sheet] during the semester. We talked about the early advising period right after midterms,” she said.
Ihsan Omer said each semester has three steps.
“You don’t want the curriculum sheet to just be a static thing that you come back to only when you have to register for classes,” Ihsan Omer said. “There is a loop. We want them to use this until they graduate — approximately eight times.”
The five-member group consulted with several university faculty in developing their videos, including Dr. David Staten, associate provost for academic affairs at SC State, and Dr. Manicia Finch, vice president of enrollment management.
Thompson said the video series will hopefully make a difference in graduation rates.
“We hope that this will affect graduation rates and matriculation rates. We want to create multiple touchpoints for students to engage with this information,” Thompson said.
The group plans for the videos to be used in addition to Student Success Center workshops and made available online during advising and registration periods so students can access them and better understand the process and timing.
“We really hope our prototypes help the university,” Ihsan Omer said. “We want our fellow students to stay at the university.”
Bulldog Repair App: ‘You have this resource at your fingertips.’
Williams, 20, a junior electrical engineering technology major from Savannah, Georgia, said the Bulldog Repair App will be a convenient resource students can use to submit maintenance requests.
“I think the true beauty of it is that you have this resource at your fingertips,” he said.
Johnson said team members were able to present their app to members of the university’s IT department and hope the university will implement it following more logistical tweaks.
“If the app is implemented the right way, it could be a really good sign for students to see how they can make an impact on this campus,” she said.
Duncan, 20, a junior mechatronics major from Mobile, Alabama, said the app has three dashboards.
“There is a student dashboard, a maintenance worker dashboard and an admin dashboard,” she said.
VanBuren said the group hopes the Bulldog Repair App will help many students and improve campus living conditions.
After the student presentation on Monday, representatives from both the IT Department and the Facilities Department expressed strong support for the app.