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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.
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).
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.
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:
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.
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