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Success Story

Creating a Culture of Connection at Denison University

The CampusGroups platform, branded as “What to DU”, has become the foundation for student engagement, cross-campus collaboration, and data-informed decision-making at Denison. The platform is helping the university build a vibrant, student-centered culture that reaches far beyond Student Life.
Institution Type:
Private, Liberal Arts College
Student Numbers:
2,400+
Location:
Granville, Ohio
Client Since:
2020

About Denison University

Founded in 1831, Denison University is a liberal arts college with 2,400 students and a strong commitment to student involvement and active learning. With a diverse student body, a successful athletics program, and a significant international student population, Denison offers a dynamic campus experience shaped by community, creativity, and curiosity.

Student engagement is central to the Denison experience, and the university supports 179 student organizations, large-scale events, and robust co-curricular programming through the Alford Community Leadership and Involvement Center (CLIC).

Outcomes

CampusGroups has become central to the way Denison supports students, shares responsibility across departments, and measures impact. This is reflected in the following user stats:
Event requests
0 +
submitted annually
Student organization funding
$ 0 million
requests that are processed each year
Total groups using the platform
0 +
including departments, programs, and residence halls

Challenges

Before launching CampusGroups in early 2021, Denison lacked a centralized system for student engagement. The university relied on Google Docs, email listservs, and a retired Learning Management System (LMS) to track events and manage student organizations. This created barriers for both students and staff, including:

  • Disconnected systems for event planning, budgeting, and attendance.
  • Difficulty tracking student involvement and organizational data.
  • Limited awareness of opportunities outside the classroom.
  • Lack of scalable infrastructure to support campus-wide collaboration.

With increasing demand for better tools and more coordinated support, Denison needed a flexible solution that could serve the entire institution, not just one department.

Solutions

Denison implemented CampusGroups under the name “What to DU”. Within just 60 days, the university launched the platform with all student organizations onboarded, over 100 visible events, and full student access enabled.

What began as a Student Life initiative quickly grew into a campus-wide system for engagement, communication, and collaboration. Denison developed a model called the “Community of Champions,” which empowers faculty and staff to manage their own pieces of the platform, train others, and use the tools in ways that align with their unit goals.

 

1. Distributed Leadership Through “Champions”

Rather than centralizing all platform oversight, Denison empowered a cross-campus team of Champions, staff who use the platform to manage their initiatives and advocate for its use in their area. Today, over 50 campus users hold admin roles across departments, including:

  • First-Year Experience
  • Fraternity & Sorority Life
  • Student Government
  • Residence Life
  • Library
  • Wellness and Health Promotion
  • Spiritual Life

2. Creative and Scalable Use Cases

Denison’s champions have taken CampusGroups far beyond events. The platform now powers:

  • Orientation group tracking and Title IX attendance compliance
  • Library book checkout using mobile IDs
  • 700+ annual fitness and wellness classes
  • Self-paced belonging & inclusion certificate programs
  • Late-night haunted tours and student employment task checklists

3. Data-Driven Retention and Outreach

CampusGroups enables Denison to identify disengaged students and follow up proactively. The First-Year Office utilized platform data to conduct a three-week outreach campaign, contacting every student through a personalized phone call and optional survey. With a small investment (mostly pizza), the effort built meaningful connections and helped flag at-risk students.

“We didn’t just implement a platform in less than 60 days…”
“We built a shared system that helps students see what’s possible.”
Dana Pursley
Director of the Alford Community Leadership and Involvement Center
“The platform makes it easy”
“The CampusGroups student engagement platform has helped people go from not knowing who’s attending their programs to having real data at their fingertips.”
Dana Pursley
Director of the Alford Community Leadership and Involvement Center

Conclusion

At Denison, CampusGroups is more than a scheduling tool. It has become the foundation for a shared culture of engagement. By empowering departments, surfacing real-time data, and making student involvement accessible and intuitive, Denison has built a model that is collaborative, sustainable, and tailored to their campus.

The result is a platform that students actually use, staff can rely on, and the whole campus community supports.