Ohio University boasts nearly 500 official student organizations available on campus, but for Rachel Finch, that was not enough.
Finch, a junior studying nursing, spent a month working with HIV/AIDS patients in hospitals and private clinics in Botswana this summer. The experience was powerful enough to inspire her and a classmate to bring their passion for global health back to OU and form the Global Health Advocates of Ohio University.
“I was shocked it didn’t already exist because it just seems like something that would,” Finch said. “It’s a bigger deal, I think, than people think it is. With the world being so connected, I feel like people need to be thinking about it more than they are.”
Although the Global Health Initiative, a program that promotes the understanding and fight against international health issues, exists as part of the College of Health Sciences and Professions, Finch said she wanted something different even from that.
”Right now, our biggest goal is probably to just raise awareness about the severity of the issues because I think people don’t think health issues around the world ... affect us,” she said. “But it does. I think our goal is to just get people thinking about it.”
Finch’s case is like many others, which could be why the number of student organizations has grown to what it is.
Brian Heilmeier, the senior assistant director of student activities in the Campus Involvement Center, said the number of organizations at OU is quite large, even for a large campus.
“Our students are finding their potential niche that they are interested in, and sometimes it is so unique that we don’t have an organization, but we can get one started,” he said.
In these situations, Heilmeier said students can go to the Campus Involvement Center to propose their ideas to a representative.
Recently, Campus Involvement Center representatives have started taking a more active approach to this part of the process, Heilmeier said. Instead of simply shuttling the students through the process of creating their own organization, representatives from the Campus Involvement Center will first look to OrgSync, a directory of student organizations, to see if a similar organization already exists.
OrgSync is a recent improvement to the Campus Involvement Center’s online presence and can help any student find a club or group that fits their interests with simple keyword searches and accurate, up-to-date information, Heilmeier said.
Heilmeier also said he typically recommends new students get involved in multiple organizations to find which suit them best early on in their time at OU and to find the balance between professional or major related organizations and fun, recreational ones.
However, getting involved is not always as easy as it seems.
Julian Flores, a junior studying early childhood education, said he felt anxious when he was a freshman and did not find the involvement fair helpful at all.
“I was totally overwhelmed when I started,” he said. “But it is worth getting into (student organizations) because you can make friends as a freshman, and that’s important.”
Flores discovered the organization for him when a member of Cru at OU, a Christian organization on campus, approached him directly, which made the organization stand out from the crowd of other clubs, he said.
“They came to me, and no other organization did that,” he said. “They make you feel comfortable before you go into it.”
Similarly to Cru, Finch’s Global Health Advocates talked to many students individually outside of Baker University Center during the first week of classes. She said she also fielded many personal Facebook messages asking about her group after posting on various OU affiliated pages. The individual approach proved successful for her group as well, with 50 people signing up for email updates.
The group’s first meeting will be this week, marking the official beginning of yet another student organization at OU.
“We just wanted to make more of a student-run organization where we can all kind of hang out and discuss the issues that are happening and do our own fundraisers,” she said. “(The Global Health Initiative) is more the academic side of things ... but we wanted to start more of an extracurricular.”
