College divers

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TyGuy

Contributor
Messages
109
Reaction score
0
Location
Connecticut
# of dives
50 - 99
Good afternoon divers,

Over the past 4 years ive been apart of my University's SCUBA Club. For the past 2 i have been President, made it to assistant instructor and have had a great time diving with fellow students. One thing ive always been trying to do is to do events and dives with other college dive programs. Contacting several different organizations seemed to be a pain since we never really had a common ground to do it on. Recently i decided to create that common ground. Right now it is nothing more than a small facebook page where college divers can communicate with eachother for help or for events and trips. My hope is to get the page large enough to create a site and a new organization to help students start diving and dive more.

Im calling out to any and all college divers to join us and really get this organization running. lets go diving.

-Tyler Vallario
President, University of New Haven SCUBA Club

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Collegiate-Divers-Unlimited/108803372582320
 
Do you include the college of 'hard knocks"? Sounds elitist to me.
 
My daughter goes to school at UConn and I've been trying to get her interested in diving ... it would be some COLD diving up there too! I teach at a community college and I will let my students know about your club - I know I have at least two divers in my classes. Good luck!
 
Sounds like a great idea just not sure how much interest you will get seeing how most college students barely have enough money to eat let alone invest in diving. I know in Texas the majority of the University dive programs are college credit cert courses and run through NAUI. You might want to get in touch with them and see if they can help provide you with a list of accredited colleges and universities participating and maybe even help spread the word for you. Best of luck!

TEJAS
 
Why don't you use SB as that resource? Thousands of members, and regionally focused sub forums... Easy to research trip destinations and plan meet ups with other colleges.

Several Florida universities meet up at the Florida events born from the SB Florida Conch Divers group such as the Megadive. They get connected not only with other college students but also with adults who provide mentorship and often food as well :) plus with the large groups, discounts are usually significant.

I just don't see the need to create another very focused social media group piggybacking on a non diver focused social media host when you have a very diver focused social media host who provides for focused groups. Having run a college dive group I found it very easy to use Scubaboard and nearly every meeting people would talk about how they found it to be a valuable learning resource.

Additionally I never had a problem with Naui sending resources to us, and Padi also helped out a lot in recent years, as did multiple local dive shops with events, discounts, and trips.
 
Why don't you use SB as that resource?
As a college student myself (for a few more months at least) I can tell you that Facebook is a lot more likely to attract the casual college divers than SB would. As much as I personally love checking this site multiple times a day, for those that only occasionally think about diving it would be a bit much. With FB they have an account which they check several times a day already.
 
Thanks for all the feedback!

elitist? never, i want to get any student i can, whether you studied at harvard or heartbreak ridge.

UCONN was actually one of the first schools i contacted since im also in CT. Right now im in contact with 3 schools in the area and trying to get more involved. It's going pretty well so far.

i did think about the programs that colleges actually offer, but i want to focus on the smaller groups who may need help gaining members, ideas for events or how to make their organization successful. i wish my school had credited programs, id never skip class (know i only skip on nice days to squeeze in an afternoon dive). if this gains seriously popularity ill reach out to PADI and NAUI as well as credited programs.

Facebook really is the best way to contact college students now. between having smart phones and always on contact with a computer it was the easiest way to start out. i would like to move onto SB once more people know about it and start utilizing it. i use facebook for my own club since most members stopped checking their emails and would spend most of their time on facebook. It's kind of tough starting in New England, i feel like if i were in FL this would be much easier! but i like a good challenge, i just hope it spreads to places like FL soon!

thanks again for the tips and ideas, this is exactly what i was looking for.
 
Of course we also used and use a Facebook page for our club, but we integrate a lot with Scubaboard and find it worked well to unite multiple clubs who each used their own Facebook page.

Tapatalk is a free app that makes browsing forums easy on a smartphone.

Spend a few minutes in your regional forum here on SB and I bet you'll find a meetup happening sometime during the year that your group can join. Maybe some used gear your members can buy and some tips on good sites for new divers. Then you can share links to the threads on Facebook and it's a win-win.
 
I know that funds are scarce for college students ... and yet ... you can't go to Cancun without seeing a few million drunken college students on spring break! And I'll never forget the cruise we stupidly booked during spring break - couldn't get a lounge chair in the sun because of all the college students (who WEREN'T sitting in the loungers - they were trolling at the bar to see who they could pick up but wouldn't make the chairs free for us old folks!!). My point being ... if they have money for spring break then they might have some money for at least one dive trip a semester. Keep at it - I think it's a great idea.

Also, to entice more prospects you might want to contact and "interview" some of the dive guides and instructors at different "exotic" dive shops and ask them to describe where a life of diving has taken them over the years. Some of these "kids" (I'm 51 so anyone under 30 is a kid to me) have worked in Egypt, Australia, Africa, and of course, Florida. You could do a skype video of a short interview and post it on fb or just feature key quotes for status updates to get people to read the interviews.

Again, best of luck!
 

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