University crafts internal network to engage students

My old Kentucky homepage: A bid to bolster retention and graduation rates

Everyone’s talking about the social network at University of Kentucky. No, it’s not Facebook. It’s not MySpace. It’s UK’s very own Big Blue Network.

Why do they need their own social network, you might ask, if most college students are on Facebook? One word: connection, says Christopher Rice, UK’s online community manager. Students on Facebook connect with high school and college friends and with family. Students on the Big Blue Network connect with their school, their school friends, the student who lives three doors down in their residence hall, and student leaders, faculty, and staff.

For a school with lower retention and graduation rates than its benchmark institutions, those connections might mean the difference between a student’s staying past his or her freshman year and eventually graduating or heading elsewhere.