As the Auburn loses one of it's traditions, rolling Toomer's Trees, faculty and students work to continue making students feel comfortable at Auburn and find new traditions and organizations that will be a good fit.
Auburn University Division of Student Affairs has created the phone app, "Auburn Students," to help current students, future students, and alumni be a part of the Auburn Experience.
Ainsley Carry, Vice President for Student Affairs, said that in the past two years they have learned three things from Auburn Students.
First, that in order for students to be successful at Auburn University, they need to be able to transition academically and socially.
Second, student success at Auburn is about engaging at Auburn.
The third idea came from an Auburn student who said Auburn is more than just academics, Auburn is a family, Auburn is the creed, Auburn is being a good Auburn man and a good Auburn woman, Auburn is an experience.
"The app that we are launching today, is the Auburn Experience," Carry said. "We spent two years trying to capture the best and most innovative and exciting traditions of the university so that students that are here right now can say, 'yep, that's the Auburn I know,' and our graduates can say, 'yes, that's the Auburn I remember,' and students who are interested in coming to school at Auburn can travel through this app and say, 'that's the place that I want to go to school."
The app was created with the help of many staff members including Lady Cox, chief of staff; Chelsea Payne, communications specialist; Eric Savage, contributor of 80 percent of the app's photos; and John Michael who helped connect the app to the AUinvolve Network.
"The big question was what makes this university special," Savage said. "So for over 18 months, i've worked on this project, gathering information from different aspects of campus and it's not (just) SGA, but from all aspects of campus."
On the app's homepage, there are six main categories.
These categories are, healthy Auburn, engage Auburn, student organizations, experience Auburn University, social timeline and roll the Auburn Oaks.
Each of these main categories has different parts for students to explore so they can find the best fit for themselves at Auburn.
The category 'roll the Auburn Oaks" is a game where students can virtually roll the Toomer's Trees.
"The point of this app is to really observe the Auburn experience and we felt like rolling Toomer's Corner was probably the one point of campus where every student, regardless of where they're from, what their interests are, what their major is, come together for one tradition," Savage said. "We're very excited about that and all the work that has been put in and we look forward to this being a first great step for Student Affairs as leading Auburn University in cutting-edge technology for our students."
Some of the different parts of the app have audio and video clips that users can click on for more information.
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