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Reaching out across the Web
Thefacebook.com shows a different side of staff and faculty
By Jessica Ullian
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Daniel Berkowitz, the assistant director of Disability Services, says the online network Thefacebook.com makes administrators more accessible to students.“It might make us a little more human,” he says. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky |
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In the past six months, certain members of the BU community have been able to discover that Katherine J. Kennedy, director of the Howard Thurman Center, likes cooking and decorating, that Daniel Berkowitz, the assistant director of Disability Services, enjoys fife and drum music, and that Dean of Students Kenneth Elmore is, according to one student, “hands down the coolest man alive!”
Kennedy, Berkowitz, and Elmore are among a small but growing number of staffers and faculty who have posted their profiles on Thefacebook.com, an online social network designed for college students. The site was introduced at the University last March, and has grown to include 12,258 student, staff, and faculty users on campus, making BU the largest community out of the 117 schools listed.
Among undergraduates, for whom online communities and instant messaging services are a popular social outlet, Thefacebook is one of the newest ways to establish an electronic link to other students — members can set up a page with a photo, list their favorite books and movies, and invite people to formally become their online “friends.” For faculty and staff, the site offers something different: a way to interact with students on their level, using their tools.
“I did it because I wanted to be current,” says Kennedy. “I do interact with a lot of students, so I wanted to seem hip and relevant to them. And it also allowed me to have a relationship with students that I might not interact with and see on a regular basis.”
The popularity of online social networks has exploded in the past two years — the Web site Friendster, which since its 2002 creation has allowed affiliates to share friends as easily as music files, brought the concept into the mainstream. Now, dozens of Web sites allow computer users to connect with others based on shared interests or acquaintances. The founders of Thefacebook, two Harvard undergraduates, found their niche by establishing networks restricted to individual universities.
The site gives online networking “a much more community feel,” explains Chris Hughes, a Harvard junior and a spokesman for Thefacebook. “Anybody whose profile I can see on Thefacebook is also someone I could see in a class.”
That same sense of connection is sought by many of the BU faculty and staff subscribers, who use the site for everything from remembering students’ names to sending out birthday greetings. When establishing a personal profile, members can post photos and include information ranging from their high schools to their intended vote in the presidential election. The next step is to invite another member to be a friend — if the invitation is accepted, each member is then linked to all of the other person’s confirmed friends.
Berkowitz, whose profile features a picture of him in a kilt with his fife-and-drum marching band, says that many students — particularly those utilizing the disability services of his office — are more at ease making initial contact through e-mail or instant messaging than in person. To that end, Thefacebook serves a dual role, offering the students a more personal view of a staff member and showing them that administrators employ the same communication tools they do. “If the students can see us in a more positive and comfortable light, that’s better,” he says.
Kennedy, who learned about Thefacebook from colleagues, says it allows her to connect with students she might not meet off-line. Her profile says that she belongs to a wine-education club called Divas Uncorked and that her favorite movies include James Bond films “and almost anything with Denzel Washington and Harrison Ford.”
John McGrath, a CGS assistant professor of social science, says Thefacebook helps him learn about his students’ personalities and discern their learning styles. David Zamojski, the director of residence life, starting using it as a communication tool, but he had second thoughts when he found out that some students regard it as a dating service. “That is certainly not my reason for being there,” he says. “I thought, ‘I’ve got to get my face off that thing.’”
The potential of such virtual networks is high, says John Storck, an SMG assistant professor of information technology. He uses a similar site, called LinkedIn.com, as a networking tool for his students, and has found that through the online community, he can locate professional contacts in a variety of companies and industries, despite not having a personal connection.
“The advantage of these social network sites now is that you can explore, more broadly, interests that you might have,” Storck says. As a business tool, however, they’re not widely used, he says — “not yet.”
About 67 faculty and staff members are registered on Thefacebook at BU, a percentage just marginally higher than the percentage of faculty and staff users on the entire network. But a number of those listed at BU say they logged in once or twice, then forgot about the service.
Richard Mendez, the director of networked information in the Office of Information Technology, says that, in contrast, around 900 faculty members use the online course management system Blackboard. In addition, the BU Faculty Link service provides course rosters and student photos. Thefacebook, he says, is a selective database: the majority of BU’s 29,400 students “have not gone to Thefacebook to put in their data.”
But when you have 76 confirmed “friends” linking you to more than 3,000 people, as Kennedy does, it’s hard to dismiss the trend.
“People find out things about me that surprise them,” she says. “It does provide conversation, and it may be also a part of why people feel a little more comfortable asking me to be their friend. They don’t see me as just some stuffy, unapproachable administrator.”
29
October 2004
Boston University
Office of University Relations