RUGconnect: A community for life

Despite our robust efforts to foster connectivity at the University, we do not currently have a single digital infrastructure to connect people across our academic community. That is where RUGconnect comes in. This new, easy-to-use online platform will be open to anyone who is a member of the UG community, from students and alumni to UG staff, study associations, and businesses.

RUGconnect offers many new options and opportunities. In addition to helping you expand your network, it will serve as a job and internship board, tell you about events and let you attend them online, allow you to reach out to, or partner with, other professionals in your field, or simply give you the chance to reconnect and reminisce with your former class mates.

This will lead to better partnerships going forward and contribute to valuable, lifelong connections between students, alumni, and the labour market.

Anyone who is a member of the UG’s academic community will be given the opportunity to create a personal profile in RUGconnect. The look and feel of your profile will depend, in part, on your role in the community. Students and alumni, for instance, can create a personal profile in which they share their work experience and professional interests, while businesses and organizations will be able to post job openings or internship opportunities.

RUGconnect will have many appealing features. It will offer a chat function that will let you message others, a personalized news feed, and a group creation feature allowing you to establish collaborations or plan an informal dinner with old friends and class mates. RUGconnect will also list events and enable you to register online. Depending on your user role, you will be able to post, promote, and manage events

Besides excitement and anticipation, the introduction of a major new platform such as RUGconnect is bound to trigger some questions – particularly among user groups that will be working with the platform all the time. Which work processes will be affected by RUGconnect and will the platform replace some of the current frequently used applications? The answers to these and other questions are contingent on your role in the organization. Please know that, if RUGconnect is expected to have an impact on your work, we will inform you of the changes well in advance. If you have any questions or comments in the interim, feel free to contact us at rugconnect@rug.nl.

Wondering when you can get started with the platform? The timeline at the bottom of this page shows the preliminary schedule for the development of RUGconnect.