Program Liaisons provide students event info

The Program Liaisons aims to boost participation in campus events and centralize information for students to get a full college experience.   

Program Liaisons is a group within Academic Initiatives, through Residential Programs and Services. 

The group works to provide information to students about events in and around campus, said Emily Hensley, graduate supervisor for academic initiatives.

“The mission of the Program Liaisons program is to find the best events and opportunities on campus and in Bloomington for the students, so they don’t have to,” Hensley said. 

The Program Liaisons started at least five years ago, said Denise Gowin, associate director of residential life for academic initiatives.

“We perceived that there was a need to find a way to communicate to students, particularly to those in the residence halls, about residence hall and campus and Bloomington programming,” Gowin said.

Program Liaisons partners with many organizations, including Office of First Year Experience and the Office of International Studies, to gather as many different types of events as possible.

“I think the goal is for the program to be a place where students know they can get information,” said Hensley.

The group consists of 16 students and one graduate advisor, all of whom are hired through RPS.

“You get that peer-to-peer interaction, which will hopefully make it easier to talk to rather than from a student-faculty perspective,” Hensley said.

Inside of the Program Liaisons there are four teams: social media, web, outreach and the print and digital committee.

Freshman Sam Hendershot works as a part of the outreach team inside Program Liaisons.

“As a whole, we all work to find events around campus,” Hendershot said. “But individually in our group we work to outreach to different groups across campus to make partnerships with them and help them to promote their events.”

Currently, the Program Liaisons gets information out to students on a variety of social media, and is working on its own website. The program also tries to place a Program Liaisons member in each residence hall, Hensley said.

“We try to do that strategically so we can deliver information to each center specifically based on what kinds of things they want to do,” Hensley said.

If students reach out to Program Liaisons on any format, it will try to give them information for events specially tailored to their interests, Hensley said.

In addition to promoting official campus and city events, Program Liaisons works to promote the events of student organizations as well.

With 889 followers on Facebook and 444 followers on Twitter, the Program Liaisons is still growing, Hensley said.

One of the projects the outreach team is currently working on is market research on the amount of students that the Program Liaisons reaches, Hendershot said.

The Program Liaisons is currently working to gain recognition as a resource for students, Gowin said.

“I think it’s a really unique program, and as it continues to grow it will be a really effective and important tool for students to use,” Gowin said.