Christian Myers
The Presence app, available on iOS and Android, is created by Modern Campus to track student engagement and student organization activities. It has a variety of student organizations and clubs integrated into the app so students can see upcoming events and general campus activities such as fitness classes and lectures.
Most Mount students may remember that there was a similar app, MOOV, which was launched back in August 2021. For a solid two years, MOOV was used to inform students about upcoming events and had a list of student organizations and clubs, much like Presence does now.
Student Government Association President Andrew Truhan (C’24) said, “We replaced MOOV with Presence because it has more capabilities. It allows us to take attendance; the metrics are better and it’s just an overall better app.”
Truhan has heard some feedback from fellow students regarding the app, stating that “the talk is mixed. The app definitely has a learning curve, but I believe students think it’s better than MOOV overall.”
Chloe Knill, Office Coordinator for the Center for Student Involvement and Belonging added that “with Presence, the Mount can bring their clubs and organizations, event processes and forms online. This is to ensure that there is streamlined and easy accessibility for students to get involved.” Modern Campus Presence is used by over 275 higher education institutions, with over 2,000 higher education institutions using Modern Campus products in general.
“I have worked with many students getting their club pages started and received a lot of positive feedback and excitement from students. The clubs I have spoken to so far are excited to be able to put their events into the app,” Knill continued. Many students believe this will be an easier way to know what is happening around campus.
The app will most likely receive new updates and features in the future. There will be more features added to Presence throughout the fall semester. One addition folks are most excited about is a finance portion that will allow clubs to view their budgets from SGA in real time. Yet another feature would be student involvement incentive programs where students can earn points and prizes for their level of involvement on campus.
Some students seem to have mixed feelings about the app. Peter Dray (C’25), a Resident Assistant, had this to say: “I like that the app shows all the campus events in one place and that it’s easy for clubs to advertise online. However, as a RA administrator who posts events, the fact that you can’t check attendance after an event has ended is problematic. The app is also very buggy and crashes a lot.”
“It’s easy to access with it being an app and it’s nice that you can see all events in one place, but only the advisor can make events on the app for your club for the time being, and it’s very buggy,” stated Gaming Club President Gabriel Neville-Martin (C’24).
Tabletop Games Club President Cameron Wiles (C’26) stated that “it all depends on whether or not people use it. If they do, I can see it staying a long time, if not, then I’m afraid it will fizzle out like MOOV did.”
The Presence app seems to be a mixed bag. There are many positive features about it that most students like, but there are also hard-hitting negatives. However, Truhan, Knill and many other students are positive that the app will succeed.
If the app can get back on track by fixing its bugs and integrating new features then maybe this is an app that could be used by many Mount classes and students to come, making campus life easily navigable for all.
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