1. College Connect:
Organization Presentation
Supporting Students' Use of Facebook
for Building Social Capital around College Going
Nicole Ellison * Christine Greenhow * Bernie Hogan

2. Project Partners: Cross-functional
Interdisciplinary Team
 Dr. Ellison (Lead Team), Information
Studies, University of Michigan
 Author of “Social Media and College Aspirations: A Social Capital
Perspective” for the Gates Foundation
 Extensive experience studying social capital, relationship
development, social media and college access

3. Project Partners: Cross-functional
Interdisciplinary Team
 Dr. Greenhow (Lead Team), Educational
Technology, Michigan State University
 Specializes in Ed Tech research and evaluation
 Studies social media, social capital, low-income
students, identity construction; PI on former Facebook App
project
 Co-founder & Former Director of Teaching and Learning for a
national college access nonprofit, College Possible, serving
12,000 HS students and alumni (http://collegepossible.org)

4. Cross-functional Interdisciplinary
Leadership Team
 Dr. Hogan (Lead Team), Oxford Internet Institute
 Computer Science, HCI, & Sociology graduate degrees
 10+ Years of programming in Java, Python and web frameworks
with a focus on user interface and social network visualization.
 Interned at Microsoft Research
 Consultant for eHarmony, Microsoft, Nokia
 Josh Melville, Oxford University’s Internet Institute
 8 years of experience with scalable web design, including
PHP MySQL, CSS and AJAX in addition to Java and Python
,
expertise.

5. History of Infrastructure for
Developing Innovation
 Capacities within and across our institutions
 Attracting private support for innovation
 Transitioning ideas into sustainable start-ups
 Helping with intellectual property issues
 Helping identify and broker partners in technology
commercialization and licensing
 Public Relations Offices
 Works with faculty and staff to generate press affiliated
products, ideas, and services

6. Marketing College Connect App
 Potential Markets
 College access non-profit programs
 Youth organizations
 College recruiters
 Guidance counselors
 National College Access Network
 Target Population
 High school and college-age users, especially low-income &
first-gen youth
 Caring adults who work with such students

7. Marketing College Connect App
 Marketing Techniques
 Spread the word via Partnerships
(e.g., College Possible, SLC schools, College Summit)
 Facebook Advertising
 Press releases via our institutions
 Guerilla Marketing

8. College Connect: Products
Our project seeks to produce:
 A quality, high impact, widely adopted Facebook app for
identifying and interacting with one’s network to build
social capital and a college-going peer group
 Design insights to share with SLC Gates database and
other FB app developers/social entrepreneurs
 Advance the knowledge base on building social capital
through social media related to college-going, through
publications, public speaking, etc.
 Help address a pressing and persistent social problem!