- Developers of the Mville Access app are, from left, Adolfo Canales, Jessica León, Pablo Ãlvarez, Erica Hernández, Camel Curi and Eduardo GarcÃa.
Just 20 years ago, a map and the advice of willing upperclassmen were the only means college freshmen had to navigate a campus. Today, there are countless online resources available to help students make the most of their college experience. But a group of six enterprising undergraduates at Manhattanville College in Purchase remained unsatisfied.
In April of last year, Adolfo Canales, Pablo Ãlvarez, Camel Curi, Jessica León, Erica Hernández and Eduardo GarcÃa began developing an iPhone app, Mville Access, designed to streamline clunky online student services. The idea came to Canales during his freshman year when he noticed the inefficiency of accessing student services on a mobile device via Safari or Google Chrome.
Together, Canales and his friends consulted with heads of student resource departments, including the Office of Residential Life and the Center for Career Development, to ensure no vital student services would be overlooked.
With the legwork complete, the group hired an outside company, Como App Maker in New York City, to create the structural skeleton of the app. The college, fully supportive of their efforts, covered the $300 price tag. “We cut a lot of the cost,” Canales said, “because if we were to code the app ourselves, it would have taken two years.”
The students tailored the basic interface to Manhattanville by adding academic information, game updates for Valiants sports teams, and transportation schedules to and from White Plains.
Also included in the app is a link to mental health services, a resource Canales notes students tend to “forget is there,” but one that is nonetheless essential to overall wellbeing.
New additions are also in the works, with some expected to be released next semester.
One addresses a common plight of college students. After hauling dirty clothes all the way to the laundry room, the last thing a student hopes to find is that every machine is in use. The Mville Access app will put a stop to these unnecessary trips by incorporating an availability monitor for washers and dryers.
Canales also hopes that by advertising the delivery services of local restaurants in the app, the restaurants will be willing to provide discounts to hungry Manhattanville students. The two restaurants Canales reached out to earlier this year were receptive to the idea.
Though proud of its success ”” roughly 40 percent of Manhattanville students have already downloaded it ”” Canales will not continue work on the app after his graduation this spring, raising questions about future leadership and development.
The idea behind Mville Access shows promise in terms of application at other small, liberal arts colleges. However, after providing the necessary funding to get the app off the ground, Manhattanville owns all rights, meaning obtaining a patent is out of the question for Canales and his colleagues.
Although implementation elsewhere seems unlikely, the continued presence of the app on campus is ensured by the college”™s plans to have incoming freshman download it as a part of orientation programming. Within the next four years, every student on campus will be using the app.
Asked why he and his friends went through the trouble of developing Mville Access, Canales said, “We wanted to leave something that everyone would remember us for.”
The ability of the app to add both convenience and simplicity to campus life ensures these six students will not soon be forgotten.
Lexi Curnin is a Rye resident and freshman at Dartmouth College.
