UNH Today

Could a back-to-basics social media approach like the original Facebook help University of New Hampshire students feel connected?    

That’s what Brett Schultz ’26 hopes as he works to launch his social media and e-commerce platform, College Connector.     

Schultz, majoring in business administration with options in finance and entrepreneurial studies at the Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics, is developing the platform to help ease students' social, emotional and financial concerns.    

A recent Gallup 一项调查发现，全球四分之一的人感到孤独, 在19-29岁的年轻人中发病率最高. According to Schultz, these statistics, coupled with the stresses some students feel from being away from home and the lingering social impacts of COVID-19, enhance the urgency to improve student engagement.    

“Coming out of COVID-19, 我们意识到学生的整体参与度下降了, 我们正试图找到一种比现有替代方案更好的方法来解决这个问题,” Schultz says. “I want to build that sense of community for incoming students and help them find their spot on the UNH campus and take advantage of high-impact opportunities.”    

College Connector would help address some of these concerns because UNH students could connect exclusively with each other on the platform while joining specific interest groups where they can chat with like-minded individuals, according to Schultz. Campus clubs and organizations could also promote activities and resources on the platform.    

Schultz points out that traditional social media once offered exclusive communities like those College Connector would provide but had to adapt to changing business models and advertising methods.    

“通过传统的社交媒体或尝试学生参与应用程序, we've found that it’s an ingenuine solution … what we're trying to do is build a genuine solution that solves the problem of social isolation while also having a sound business model,” Schultz says. “We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel; we’re trying to change the model.”    

To be financially sustainable, College Connector would utilize a marketplace feature where students can sell textbooks, school supplies, furniture and more. 舒尔茨指出，这个市场对学生来说也是一个很好的收入来源, alleviating financial stress.    

Schultz aims to fully deploy College Connector on the UNH campus by the fall of 2024. His team is also entering the UNH Paul J. Holloway Prize Competition. 

College Connector recently won $2,750 for being the most financially sustainable solution at the NH Social Venture Innovation Challenge. Schultz has used the funding to hire four additional developers to improve and grow the platform.   

Schultz envisions extending College Connector to other college campuses and has visited different schools to assemble a team of student ambassadors. The aim is to establish a structure where students manage each school's page continuously.    

The development of the College Connector platform originated from Schultz's participation in the 保罗创业中心莫里斯创新奖竞赛, which he won. Schultz was recently selected for BostInno’s 通过他在创业中心的工作获得了年度25 Under 25榜单. BostInno是一家覆盖初创企业、技术和创新的数字媒体.    

Joshua Cyr, interim director of the Peter T. Paul Entrepreneurship Center, said he’s impressed with the amount of effort Schultz has put into College Connector.   

“The challenge with such a technical idea is that if you don’t have the technical knowledge to build it, 你要么学习，要么与专家合作,” Cyr says. “Brett decided to do both. He started teaching himself how to build websites and how to install plugins and has been doing research. At the same time, he's been having great conversations with students to work on the project with him.”   

The ECenter is a place where many new ideas are hatched and discussed, and Cyr advises when needed. 他说，College Connector的发展非常迅速，令人兴奋.     

“While the core ideas remain the same the approach and specifics evolve as Brett has spent more time on it. He has met with many students from multiple colleges, mentors, competition judges, etc., and continues to do so while synthesizing those varied and sometimes even contradictory bits of feedback into his own vision and plan for the startup's future,” Cyr says.   

除了大学连接器和他的商业研究，舒尔茨是一个 dual major in sustainability and has been highly active at UNH. He said the ability to study entrepreneurship and a dual major in sustainability made UNH stand out.    

他说:“并不是所有的学校都有这样的课程，更不用说两者都有了。. “I see entrepreneurship as a tool of problem-solving, 当你想到与可持续发展相关的问题, there's a bunch; that’s why I think the Social Venture Innovation Challenge is great. There are so many systemic social, economic, and environmental problems in this world, and there are so many niche ones too, like social isolation, that I think can be solved with business serving as a mechanism and an overall force for good.”