In Summer 2025, St. Lawrence University switched from using Involve to SLUCentral, a campus community platform that serves as a hub for student-life elements, such as events, groups, forms, calendars, and campus websites.
Director of Student Activities and Sullivan Student Center, Ashlee Downing-Duke, explained the reasons to switch from Involve to SLUCentral: “One feedback was that Involve was not always user-friendly, and it made it really tough for multiple people to log in at the same time for voting or for checking in.” She also likes how the platform has links to different websites on campus, such as the Dana menu and Canvas. “We have been hearing for a long time that students want a kind of one-stop shop since we have a lot of different platforms on campus,” Downing-Duke says.
St. Lawrence signed a five-year contract with a company called Ready Education for SLUCentral, according to Downing-Duke. The company made the website SLU-specific with scarlet and brown colors and school logos. The platform’s name, SLUCentral, was decided based on the votes for a story on St. Lawrence University’s official Instagram account.
Laura Alyse Millikan, the associate director of campus programming and engagement, highlights the efficiency of event workflows and data collection on SLU Central.“We’re going to be using a budgeting system within SLU Central to help students keep student organizations, keep track of their finances and check out p-cards, and do online ordering,” she says. “I think one of my favorite things about it is that you can’t really delete anything, so it’s a really good archival tool.”
Alissa Lapentti Grünstein ’27, a community assistant, finds SLU Central efficient to complete her tasks as a student leader. “SLU Central made life easier for CAs because now a lot of the reports that we write, whether it be weeklies or the reports after the rounds, can all be found in the same platform,” she says.
Ananya Maddipatla ’27 finds SLU Central’s performance better than that of previous platforms. “SLU Central has really been an improvement since Presence and Involve, because now we have a better way of combining everything we need in order to be organized,” she says. She is excited about the new calendar feature that will soon be available for students to align their schedules with campus events. She also notes that the link to SLU Central should be more accessible on the school’s website. “No one really knows what the link is unless we’ve been taught how to type it in,” Maddipatla says.
OC Theme House Coordinator Skylar White ’26 agrees that streamlining everything in one platform is very useful. However, she finds SLU Central very strict when it comes to event registrations. “We have spontaneous trips that go out every week and often a couple times a week, and those are not really things that we can plan ahead of time, and I would love to have a way to advertise those other than e-mail,” she says. While SLU Central only allows formal events to be registered a minimum of six days before the event, the informal events only apply to parties. “I wish there were an informal event registration form for campus events and daytime activities,” White says.
Downing-Duke advises students not to get overwhelmed with the number of options on SLU Central, saying that everyone will be more comfortable using it over time. She also encourages students to use the app and join training sessions on SLU Central later in September. “The more students utilize it, the better the app is going to be,” she says.