S.P.I.N. Kicks Off With Academic Year

You’ve seen the posters around campus: “S.P.I.N.,” “CORQ,” a lot of letters urging you to get involved.

The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point’s Student Involvement and Employment Office, S.I.E.O., is launching a new student involvement network, S.P.I.N., Stevens Point Involvement Network, and companion app, CORQ, with the launch of the 2016-2017 academic year.

“S.P.I.N. at its very basic level is just the student organization management system. So, it kind of replaces our old S.O.D. [Student Organization Database], where it just lists our student organizations and their rosters. Building from there, it does a lot more. It lists events, so we have all of our student organization events in there as well as campus department events that have been put in there,” said University Services Associate II, Leigh Jentz.

Lebow hopes that students will automatically go the app to find out about student events and organizations.

As well as keeping students connected with their student organizations, S.P.I.N. includes an event browsing feature. Through the S.P.I.N. website or the CORQ app, students are able to log in and view events by date or filter by category, such as “employment,” “movie,” “recreation,” or “volunteer”, by themes (i.e., athletics, fundraising, spirituality, or by perks like free food, free stuff and credit.)

“CORQ goes hand-in-hand with S.P.I.N. It’s a very easy way to access the events that are currently in S.P.I.N. It’s basically a lite version of S.P.I.N. that’s quick to access and answer the question of ‘What’s going on tonight?’” Jentz said.

In addition to providing a comprehensive calendar of events on campus, S.P.I.N. provides students with a co-curricular resume.

“The chancellor requested that we look into a program that could create a co-curricular transcript or record, so basically a listing of all a student’s activities outside of the classroom, which SPIN does,” Jentz said. “So students can use it to basically build their own e-portfolio, kind of a resume, to list all of their organization memberships and events that they’ve attended and they can also add their own experiences… So come the time you’re applying for a scholarship or grad school or a job, all that information is easily accessible.”

To keep track of the events they have attended, students will be able to “swipe in” when they arrive to automatically add their attendance to their S.P.I.N. record, according to LeBow.

Allison Stoffel, junior health science with pre-occupational therapy major, uses S.P.I.N. to keep up with her involvement in Habitat for Humanity.

“I mostly use it for keeping updated with the club that I’m in. I haven’t used it yet with any other organizations, just with Habitat. But one of my favorite things is that people can join before they come to a meeting, so they can kind of see what’s going on in the club before they actually decide to go. So if they’re more shy, I think that’s a really cool thing,” Stoffel said.

While there is still much to discover through S.P.I.N. and CORQ, many students are already on their way. You can sign into S.P.I.N. at spin.uwsp.edu or download the CORQ app by CollegiateLink to get started.

“I’m hopeful that people will really like using it,” LeBow said. “We’re still figuring out how to use it, but I’m just thrilled with what it allows us to do.”

Kathryn Wisniewski

Reporter

Kathryn.E.Wisnewski@uwsp.edu