ASUC Academic Affairs Vice President Natalie Gavello has spearheaded the creation of a website that will help students find their new favorite place to study, aiming to increase awareness of the various study locations that Berkeley has to offer.
ThinkPlace allows students to find a comprehensive catalog of libraries and cafes around Berkeley. Listing all 29 campus libraries and more than 50 locations in all, the site provides hours, addresses and descriptions of amenities of each study location, such as the number of outlets and amount of elbow room.
“The way the modern student works is not just at home at a desk,” said Director of Academic Technology Warren McQuinn, who works in the Office of the AAVP. “You go wherever fits you best at the moment, and … there are more people doing that now than ever before.”
Before launching the site, the ThinkPlace subcommittee scoped out each location and took pictures to contribute to the website. The site launched last December during Reading, Review and Recitation Week and received 3,000 hits, according to McQuinn.
The website was created as a short-term solution for the problem of limited study spaces on campus, said Deputy of Academic Services Yevgeniy Pilipovskiy, who also works in the Office of the AAVP.
Especially during finals season, prime study locations such as the Student Learning Center, Moffitt Library and Gardner Main Stacks are often overcrowded with students vying for limited desk space.
“We didn’t feel like people had enough information on where they could study,” Pilipovskiy said.
The ThinkPlace team members said they plan to expand the website and make it more student-friendly with features such as the Seven Wonders of Berkeley, which will showcase the best study spots in Berkeley. The team also plans on creating ThinkPlace awards that will highlight the best coffee shops in town.
“We want to make (the website) laid-back and casual,” Gavello said. “That’s the goal.”
As it continues to develop, ThinkPlace will become more interactive, expanding on its current Facebook comment feature and creating a recommendation engine so that students can bookmark their favorite places.
Gavello said she hopes that ThinkPlace will gain more student attention with its Facebook page and Instagram account and that the website will become a convenient resource for students who want to find more study places around Berkeley.
“I’m a freshman, so I didn’t really know about all the study places,” said Internal Coordinator for the ThinkPlace subcommittee CheYeon Hyun. “But after working with ThinkPlace, I’ve realized that there are so many great places you can go to to study.”
In addition to ThinkPlace, during her time as AAVP, Gavello has worked to make the Student Learning Center open 24 hours a day. She said she is also hoping to make Moffitt Library open 24 hours a day before the end of her term.
Contact Jennie Yoon at [email protected]