Project by LLC, informatics students to benefit incoming freshmen

A collaboration between the Franks School of Education Living Learning Community (LLC) and a senior design group from the Department of Informatics will provide a new resource for incoming Trine University freshmen making the adjustment to college life.

“Trine’s Survival Guide” is located online at trinesurvivalguide.weebly.com. The new website includes links to free time and off-campus activities, tips for Trine campus housing, academics and technology such as Moodle and myPortal, and general advice for living at Trine.

The website was one of three projects completed by the Thunder Tech senior design team, which included informatics majors Brice Cooper from Angola, Indiana, Austin Zachrich from Defiance, Ohio, Eric Peal from Imperial, Missouri, and Julian Ridgway from Edon, Ohio.

The LLC, which is made up of first-year students, took on the project after developing its mission statement: “We are striving to be great educators who make a positive difference on our future students and the community we live in.”

“Our mission behind the app was directly toward impacting the community, specifically Trine's,” said LLC member Grace Moyer, an elementary education/special education major from Indianapolis. “We all had our own struggles with starting school, whether it was what to bring, where our classes were or what to do for fun, so we identified some of the most common and got to work.”

Teams from the LLC researched each of the topics covered on the site, providing content for the final product.

“As freshmen we were still learning what is available on- and off-campus, so we thought it would be a great idea to find information out and share it with others,” said Morgan Wittmer, an elementary education major from Elkhart, Indiana. “There were specific things we had no idea about, such as off-campus dining options along with their hours of operation. Once we heard about them from other students on campus we became curious and looked deeper.”

The website will be shared as a resource with future incoming freshmen at Trine.

“While this website will not erase all of the struggles of freshman year, I hope it can ease some of them,” said Moyer.

Photo: Austin Zachrich, left, and Julian Ridgway demonstrate elements of the “Trine’s Survival Guide” website to members of the university’s the Franks School of Education Living Learning Community.