Last year, I did qualitative research on Chinese international students’ involvements on campus, while I was collecting data on the club rosters from the GetINvolved website, I found that there were significant issues with the club categorization. For the research, I went through all the clubs as well as their categories on the Get INvolved website. There were over 200 student-run organizations listed in only 4 categories: Academic, Arts, Athletics & Recreation, Career Development. Many clubs on the Get INvolved website did not have a category for searching, for example, many of the cultural groups. Moreover, the four original categories were overlapping, like most of the organizations listed under the career-development category were also listed under the academic category. For research purposes, I had to recategorize many of the clubs into 6 categories that better define the clubs.
Today, I went on the Get INvolved website again and gladly found that the clubs are recategorized into 14 categories including academic, arts, athletics & recreation, career development, club sports, cultural/diversity, dean of student office, fraternity & sorority organizations, honor society, leadership development, peer education groups, service, social, student organizations. Compared to the original categories, the current ones are not only much more helpful for students who are looking for clubs to join, but also show that the clubs that are originally not represented in any categories are valued as important parts of the campus diversity.
