When is the next CAT meeting? I can’t do dinner, I have chapter tonight. Who should I contact to join Blue Key? As students are thrown back into the world of extracurricular activities, questions like these can be overheard in passing. If you find yourself stressing over your back-to-school schedule, VU Groups is about to make your life easier.

The fall semester is in full swing, and for many Villanova students, the return to campus also means the return to a bustling extracurricular life. Planners are filled with reminders for meetings and events, and trying to manage a busy schedule after the leisurely summer is a daunting task.

To make this challenge easier, the Office of Student Development is introducing VU Groups. Found in the myNOVA portal, VU Groups is a one-stop database for extracurricular activities. Students, organizations and administrators will have the ability to communicate under the new site, as well as contact other organizations on campus.

“It is going to be incredibly helpful,” says Andrew Moriarty, the general manager of WXVU. “It will be conducive to reaching out and working with other groups.”

According to Director of Student Development Tom Mogan, VU Groups serves several vital purposes. It allows individual students to manage their extracurricular involvement. They can create a profile catered to their groups, events and leadership positions. They can update their profile based on their involvement in campus organizations and create a co-curricular transcript. This is a particularly useful function, as many employers now request to see records of participation in student activities. Students will also have the ability to extend their VU Groups information to Facebook.

The site also serves as an important communication tool. It allows organizations to communicate with their members and the administration, as well as with other groups on campus. It doubles as a publicity resource, allowing organizations to send out messages to their members and post virtual fliers and reminders on a message board.

In addition to these functions, VU Groups will streamline the work of Student Development. It will provide an instantaneous and accessible way of contacting the Office of Student Development, no matter the time of day.

“It’s an exciting new system that will enhance involvement on campus,” Mogan says.

The site was launched on Monday, but members of student organizations received a preview of the program during a leadership conference held Sunday, Aug. 30.

Currently, the site is only live for events, but organizations and individual students will soon have the ability to create profiles and communicate with one another. When groups register with the site, they will also apply for their yearly budget with the Office of Student Development. Financial records are an important aspect of the VU Groups page, and the site will make it easier to track budget requests, allocations and purchases.

VU Groups is an offset of CollegiateLink, a site which serves to improve communication channels and create a stronger sense of community on college campuses. Universities throughout the country use the site, and Villanova will now be among them. While students still adjust to the return to college life, the introduction of VU Groups will make their busy schedules easier to manage.