Chapman’s student organizations team launches Panther Connect

Photo Illustration by Samantha Rosinski

In the beginning of the fall 2024 semester, it was announced that Chapman’s Student Involvement team would no longer use Engage, but would switch to Panther Connect.

Panther Connect is a platform to help bridge the gap between students and on-campus clubs and organizations. It allows for leaders of organizations to communicate and organize meetings or events. In addition, students can connect to clubs they are interested in by becoming members of.

Sydney Nomura, the program coordinator on the student involvement team, explained how Panther Connect has been an upgrade from Engage for students because of the expansion of features.

​​”Panther Connect has a lot more functionality compared to Engage,” Nomura told The Panther. “Student Organizations being able to submit their event requests and track their budgets and transactions all within the platform was not a possibility in Engage, so this is a major upgrade.”

Nomura also explained that student organizations have a wide range of features to use. The organizations can make event requests, manage on-campus account budgets, communicate with members and submit requests.

In addition, Nomura stated that Panther Connect is for all Chapman students: those in clubs and those that are not. She explained that the homepage has a section for student club management and also resources for all students such as Canvas, Panther Mail and Handshake.

Haley Kamola, a senior film production major and the co-director of the student organization Kesem at Chapman, started using Panther Connect at the start of the semester and said she plans to implement it more than Engage.

“My club didn’t use Engage that much last year, but I feel like we’ll be using Panther Connect a lot more,” Kamola stated. “There are a few more uses on Panther Connect, like booking rooms and announcing meetings and events.”

One of the features of Panther Connect is organizations being able to book rooms for meetings. Kamola explained what her hopes are for Panther Connect compared to Engage.

“I am hoping that people besides those listed as club presidents are able to create events and book rooms. My club is overseen by a national organization so we have different roles than just the traditional president, vice president, etc.,” Kamola told The Panther.

“I have exec members who need to book rooms as a part of their role, so I am hoping that they are given that permission despite not being the club president,” She continued. “This was also an issue with Engage, but we have always only been able to list one primary contact for our club.” 

One of the issues that student organizations have faced over the last few weeks is figuring out how to adjust to a new system.

Kaylee Scott, a senior psychology major and a co-president of Active Minds at Chapman, explained that she did like the update of Panther Connect to Engage overall, but there were some issues switching over.

“I found it a little frustrating that we had to transfer all of our organization's information over manually, and that none of our past members were saved into our new account,” Scott stated. “Overall, I think it will be a useful tool once everyone gets used to the new system and all the kinks are worked out on the system’s side.”