INDIANOLA, Iowa — Resume. Internship. Job. This three-step process is often the formula for success for every college student.

Staff at Simpson College are hoping to add a more ingredients to this recipe for success.

“A lot of what happens here is based on our student’s accomplishments,” said Jill Johnson, vice president for marketing and public relations.

Those accomplishments include distribution of both the dean’s and president’s lists. The process can be time consuming because of the length of the lists.

“We found this service called Merit Pages,” Johnson said. “It allows us to input all students’ names into their database and then when we have something like the dean’s list or the president’s list, we can expand it to include things like study abroad or election to student government.

“We can now push out even more information about what’s happening at Simpson and our students’ successes.”

Each student has access to their own individual Merit Page. This includes the student’s accomplishments while at Simpson, but can be customized.

“The student has the ability to customize their page with other things, such as an internship or a Greek affiliation, or other things that wouldn’t necessarily be something that we would typically send out to outside media,” Johnson said.

Mary Fortune, public relations administrative assistant, agreed that Merit Pages aims to be Simpson’s version of LinkedIn. Merit Pages can also be linked to a LinkedIn profile.

Online student portfolios are also used to promote the work of Simpson students.

“Portfolium is an e-portfolio system where students can showcase their best work and demonstrate their learning, both in their majors and minors and in the Engaged Citizenship Curriculum,” said Tracy Dinesen, associate dean of academic affairs and retention.

These online student portfolios can be a tool for students when applying for jobs or graduate school. These portfolios can be shared with specific employers or schools to display work they have done in class, research or an internship. These portfolios can be used even after graduation.

“Students will have a free account for life and can store an unlimited amount of documents,” Dinesen said.

Both the Merit Pages and online student portfolios are valuable tools available to every student.

Information on both has been emailed to students but may be located in the “Other” tab.