Welcome to The Den
Extracurricular engagement among students at Lakehead has been steadily increasing since the return to in-person learning. Currently, over 30% of students are involved in 118 clubs across Thunder Bay, Orillia, and Barrie campuses, as either members or officers. That's around 2400 out of a total population of a little under 10,000. On top of that, 1800 students belong to one of Lakehead's four program-specific student societies. While these numbers are decent, LUSU thinks they can increase extracurricular student engagement to nearly 100%.
How? The Clubs Den.
Before we get into that - what are LUSU-sponsored clubs, anyway? I spoke with LUSU staff Felix (VP Operations/Finance) and Leigh (Orillia Manager/Health Plan Coordinator) to get some clarity on that, and other crucial Den-related inquiries.
"[LUSU-sponsored clubs] are clubs that run formally. They can be interest groups, [such as for] board games, areas of studying, for social causes, religious, or cultural. They operate within and are all overseen by the LUSU structure", Felix told me.
He went on to say that a benefit for students to start or join a club hosted by LUSU is that it "completes the university experience. You find your community by joining or starting one of these clubs. It's a good way to meet like-minded individuals you would not meet elsewhere - we can forget about people who aren't in our majors".
Leigh added that "starting a LUSU sponsored club allows students to be formally recognized by LUSU and the university as an official group. Clubs are supported by LUSU in many ways, including access to spaces, funding, insurance, finances, and club management, as well as various in-office resources".
With the Clubs Den, these opportunities are becoming expanded. To start, Felix outlined some basic changes. "The [website] name is different, it's not 'My Clubs' anymore. Shout out to Caine [LUSU's Communication Officer] for the wolf den logo. We are the Thunderwolves, we as LUSU are [part of] the same community as [the rest of] Lakehead; this brings it [all] together".
Exploring the Clubs Den, it is clear it provides club officers and members with far more capabilities than the old site. I wanted to know what inspired LUSU to pursue this change.
"As a club officer, I hated the old website", Felix told me. "It was my biggest pet peeve when I would run my clubs… it wasn't up to the times. Once you were done [officially] joining the club as a club member, everything else [the site offered] was basically the admin side of things. It felt like it was built for an administrator, which led a lot of clubs, including my own, to create other channels of communication. From an administrative point of view, this could result in incurring costs if you wanted to use a sophisticated communication system, [for example] monitoring group chats to ensure [they wouldn't] dissent".
Felix went on to say that when he was elected into his current position, he immediately got to work on revamping the clubs' website. "Day one, I created this document reviewing the website and went through it with a fine toothed comb. I asked Leigh how the [clubs' site] was functioning, and made it a mission to find what would work for a campus of our size."
"Being in software engineering [myself], I was intrigued to look at our current code. Lots of [it] was old and deprecated, as it was made in 2014. Before we signed the contract, I spent two weeks of sleepless nights trying to untangle the [old site's] code and update it. The consensus was that we should restart, and build [the new site] from the ground up", he said.
"We looked at several providers until we found one [ideal] company with a strong Canadian presence. Many institutions said really good things about this organization. We started working on [the Clubs Den] last May. We tried about 4 demos [other than this company], but this was the best."
If they were going to build a new clubs' site, one thing LUSU was determined to change was how students could access it. Specifically, they wanted to incorporate Lakehead's SSO (single sign-on) framework. This means that students can log into the site the same way they do with their school email, D2L, or other Lakehead entities. Though it took longer than anticipated for that request to be reviewed, LUSU was dedicated to getting the SSO. "We really wanted [the SSO] to create a seamless feeling", Felix said.
"We received a lot of feedback from clubs about the old site. From a club admin perspective, it was also very difficult for LUSU staff to do anything with that site", Leigh added. "[It was] very wasteful of our resources, very inefficient. When we were looking for a new site, we had this knowledge of what clubs were looking for… if we were going to make a change, why just change a little bit here and there? Let's make it completely new and innovative. That's [in alignment with] where clubs are going too. [They're] becoming more active, more innovative… we wanted [to change] it all, and weren't willing to compromise in any way."
The Clubs Den's new features include:
Use your Lakehead login credentials to access the site.
Club profile picture
Club photo gallery
Memberships no longer expire! This means your members remain members until they choose to leave the Club.
Event management: create events, manage event registrations, and track attendance.
All bookings, requests, and Club finances are built right into the site with simple tracking and feedback.
Member communication: Easily send texts and emails to your members.
A “News” feature to update your personalised Club site with articles, news and all things Club related.
Chat with LUSU admins on the site.
Easy Club renewal process.
Internal voting feature (your elections can now be managed in the site)
Update and add your own officers.
Upload Club documents and files for current and future years.
Your own Club page that includes a Club Logo, links to your Club social media pages and external webpage if you have one, photo gallery, Club information, events, and more.
Choose your Club's own website handle! Example: https://clubsden.lusu.ca/organization/yourclubname
Optimized performance.
Talking to Felix and Leigh, it is clear that one of the main driving factors behind the creation of the Clubs Den is to consolidate everything, and make extracurriculars part of the Lakehead online ecosystem. They expect the Clubs Den to improve student engagement drastically. This falls in alignment with the opening of the new Barrie STEM Hub campus, at which LUSU has already begun engaging students.
Despite no physical LUSU space at the STEM Hub (currently), Leigh told me that she has already been in touch with a few incoming STEM Hub students that expressed excitement about getting involved in extracurriculars through the student union.
Felix expects Lakehead's rapidly growing presence in Simcoe County to be supported by the release of the Clubs Den. "The push to bring STEM and Engineering faculty to the Barrie area is beautiful. With this new site, it allows them to create [more opportunities]. [You can] upload photos showing what your club is. [There is] the opportunity for the community to take part in this system. Clubs [can] make their events open to the public and integrate them into public calendars. This is a great way for us to engage with grade 11 and 12 students who are looking to attend university club experiences, see what they can expect when they're coming into the university, and what they can bring into campus life". Felix also hopes to release a companion app to the Clubs Den website in the near future.
Ultimately, the staff at LUSU are excited to see the new opportunities Clubs Den allows for unfold throughout the student population. "It holds so much potential", Leigh told me. "We are open to any student feedback. We want to hear from [them]. If there is anything they want to see, [we want them to] let us know.
Explore the new site at this link.