We wanted to reprise a popular and tremendously helpful list compiled by collegesurfing.com earlier this year. During the Winter Olympics, the site decided to award honors to the 50 best schools using social media. 
While the list could be reordered, the overall quality of social media interaction done by these schools is fantastic. For example, did you know Tufts has its own social media network that has proven to be quite popular? It appears that the majority of these schools are large in size (not all, Ithaca and Tufts got top honors) so perhaps having a larger audience makes social networking easier?
Anyway, we encourage you to check out the even more detailed list of winners over at collegesurfing.com. And the awards go to…
Gold Medal Winners
1. Tufts University – What’s for dinner? If you’re a student at Tufts, you’ll always be in the know about your next meal since the school’s two dining halls tweet breakfast, lunch, and dinner menus every day of the week. Tufts maintains a handful of other Twitter feeds, like @TuftsUniversity and @TischLibrary. Students interested in the school can join the Tufts Facebook group, which is moderated by more than two dozen students and also provides links to a variety of student and administrator blogs. Plus, the university has an entire site dedicated to Web 2.0 tools like wikis, podcasts, conferencing, and more.
2. Johns Hopkins University – The prolific feed of Johns Hopkins University is packed with tips on everything from area restaurants to major money-saving deals on Windows 7. Plus, the school gets props for letting the Twitterverse in on its tongue-in-cheek swine flu lexicon. Twenty current students are official bloggers for the Hopkins Interactive hub, which also presents student profiles, videos, and discussion forums. Johns Hopkins even maintains a separate Facebook page for prospective students.
3. Ithaca College – Ithaca maintains a lighthearted feed that includes references to free chocolate-covered bacon (a.k.a. a heart attack waiting to happen) at Ithaca Farmers Market, and funny tweets like this one: Frosh, Ithaca is NOT typically this brisk on 9/1. We’re more likely to be sweating like a Kentucky chicken at the Sanders family reunion. The school’s Facebook page boasts upwards of 3,600 fans, and more than a dozen blogs are easily accessible from the school’s home page. Prospective students can even register for live virtual chats with Ithaca admission staff and current students.
4. Butler University - Kudos to Butler for letting its mascot, an adorable bulldog, run his own Twitter account, complete with photos and videos of his latest collegiate antics: It’s Monday of welcome week at @butleru and I’m jacked up…2nd box destroyed this morning: http://twitvid.com/A5E75.
5. Case Western Reserve University’s Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing – This year’s disaster drill for flight nursing camp students at Case Western Reserve University’s Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing was covered live on Twitter. The nursing school tweeted a continuous stream of commentary while students cared for victims throughout the simulated earthquake and gas main explosion. They also have their own YouTube channel.
6. Yale University – Not only does Yale cash in on its preeminent status by tweeting about its string of famous speakers (Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan, Bishop John Rucyahana of Rwanda, NBC’s Tom Brokaw, and Chef Jacques Pepin), the school also links to its own compelling research on understanding cognitive decline and stopping the spread of cancer. Not to mention that the school’s “Why I Chose Yale”
7. Gustavus Adolphus College – This school gets props for tweeting fun videos like 2009 Commencement in Less Than One Minute and Gustie Rouser by the Greeters. Gustavus Adolphus might be a mouthful to say, but there’s plenty of easy chatter in its Twitter stream about all that’s happening on campus. Add to this a strong presence on LinkedIn and Flickr, and you’ve got a school that knows how to work the Web.
8. Emerson College – Emerson lives up its school’s motto: “Bringing innovation to communication and the arts.” Two students did this in a big way when President Jacqueline Liebergott sent an email to the campus community promising an important announcement. They logged on to Twitter and launched the hashtag #jackiessecret in order to fuel speculation about what the President’s news could be. Even after Emerson students learned that she was giving notice of her retirement, #jackiessecret tweeted on, this time with suggestions for President Liebergott’s replacement.
9. Allegheny College – forges solid connections between Twitter and Facebook and gets plenty of feedback from responsive alumni: Great thread going on over on our Facebook fan page. As an alum, what advice do you have for new & returning students? http://bit.ly/13Xxqc.
Silver Medal Winners
10. San Diego State University – The SDSU news team does an excellent job of disseminating college info that’s relevant in popular culture: Teen tanning salon laws limit access, not exposure: New SDSU study making news nationwide http://budurl.com/j2xm and Cool video from the opening of SDSU’s Student Veteran House http://ow.ly/pxpd. The first on campus vets residence in the nation. SDSU boasts a blog by the marketing and communications folks as well as individual Facebook pages for the news center, bookstore, library, and admissions department. And profs are dedicated to using social media like wikis and Ning in the classroom.
11. Stanford University Institute of Design – They recently live-tweeted a two-hour design challenge for its d.school bootcamp, complete with photos on Yfrog: We don’t know what we are designing yet… & that’s a good thing. Allow yourself room to uncover unexpected needs from real people. Now that’s what I call innovation. Plus, the school’s blog and Facebook and Twitter accounts are each linked from the graphic design school’s home page for easy access.
12. Boston University – Stephen Prothero, professor of religious studies at Boston U., has turned his Twitter feed into a veritable microcourse on world religions: Islam 140: Allah told Gabriel told the prophet Muhammad (PBUH): Just 1 God, pray to Him 5x day, give alms, fast, hajj to Mecca. Submit! Ahh!
13. Carnegie Mellon University – This school uses its feed to shout out to its celeb alums (Zachary Quinto, Cherry Jones, etc.); boast about the school’s many innovations (a Carnegie Mellon prof created the first e-mail emoticon in 1982!); and link to useful info like brain imaging research that offers yet another reason to reconsider using your cellie while driving. They also have a presence on YouTube and Facebook, but their school site could use a few more photos.
14. Kansas State University – K-State maintains more than 40 Twitter accounts, including several star faculty Twitterers. Here’s one: Mike Wesch, assistant professor of cultural anthropology, who studies Twitter, YouTube, and other social media. Is it any surprise that he doesn’t miss a thing? Guy catches laptop with his butt (nothing is sacred with viral promotions) http://is.gd/2e5RP. The school’s Facebook page boasts more than 19,000 fans, and K-State blogs are everywhere. Our fave: Barf Blog, published by an associate professor of food safety.
15. La Trobe University – This Australia school has a lively and random feed that includes lots of fun photos: Shots of La Trobe Uni from the 1970s, when it was safe to swim in the moat: http://bit.ly/uVd0w. And my personal fave: There is a baby doll doing a headstand on top of the statue of Charles La Trobe. Art or graffiti? http://twitpic.com/iobnu. Their Facebook page has close to 5,000 fans, and the school’s educational designer blogs for EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit geared toward advancing higher education through IT.
16. Mount Holyoke College – The Mount’s live Twitter feed of the much-beloved convocation that opens the school year brought forth a cavalcade of student and alumni tweets of joy and nostalgia. One parent even confessed to reading the convocation tweets over Skype to her daughter who is studying abroad (gotta love technology!). Mount Holyoke maintains a Facebook presence, admission chat events, and a Web hub for an unbelievable number of blogs by students, faculty, and staff.
17. Ohio State University – OSU’s Twitter account, @OhioState is worthy in its own right with regular tweets of all things Buckeye, but the school’s Web 2.0 true claim to fame is its Twittering president, E. Gordon Gee. There are only a handful of college presidents on Twitter, so it’s neat to see @PresidentGee (who’s old enough to get away with wearing bowties) sharing details of his everyday life via 21st century technology: Have finished Doris Kearns Goodwin’s TEAM OF RIVALS. So much we can all learn from Lincoln’s example. (Now for some light summer reading.) In addition, the school boasts live admission chats with current students, and the OSU Facebook page has upwards of 48,000 fans.
18. The University of Denver – Denver has found a unique and valuable use for its Twitter feed: Up-to-the minute traffic reports: Traffic alert, University Blvd. at Asbury, near DU, down to one lane each direction as crews fix water leak http://bit.ly/A7CcI. Plus, the school boasts upwards of 2,000 fans on Facebook, an admissions blog, a parents’ blog, and 10 student blogs.
19. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign – How cool is this? The undergraduate library of the UIUC has a feed dedicated to connecting students to library resources like audiobooks, journal articles, abstracts, even fun magazines. Unfortunately for the rest of us, the majority of these are access restricted. But UIUC does offer 10 student blogs, four admissions blogs, as well as housing, campus rec, and performing arts blogs. And the school’s Facebook page boasts more than 13,000 fans.
20. Queens University of Charlotte – This school does a good job keeping the college community connected to its far-away students. The school regularly tweeted blog updates from students on international study tours as well as those who biked across the country for charity last summer. Queens also boasts a strong presence on Facebook, where it posts links to cool content like this campy swine flu video on the school’s YouTube channel. Student “telecounselors” are available to answer prospective students’ admissions questions.
21. Rhode Island School of Design – RISD’s official Twitter account is certainly respectable, but President John Maeda’s feed is the one to watch (he has more than 13,000 followers!). The prez’ feed is full of pithy epithets like this: Friends are the fabric softener in an otherwise heavy-duty wash cycle of life and this: We are the media we’ve been waiting for. Does he make this stuff up? Maeda also maintains a blog for the RISD community, and was a keynote speaker for the highly regarded Web 2.0 Expo in 2009.
22. Roanoke College – The school finds a way to publish wild news like a 102-year-old alum who’s still publishing research and a Roanoke staff member finding and returning a Virginia Tech alum’s class ring that had been lost for 30 years. The school boasts a Facebook group for potential students and accepted students as well as a blog to keep the college community abreast of the latest school news. Last year, Roanoke even launched a Web site (and hysterical videos of failed mascot auditions) for the world at large to help create the college’s mascot.
23. Princeton University – Princeton gets kudos for employing ubiquitously online faculty like Melissa Harris-Lacewell. No matter what sharp tidbits she’s tweeting, this associate professor of politics and African American studies always let her personality shine through: Heading out to do Hardball on MSNBC. Coming straight from the gym. Excuse crazy hair.
24. College of William & Mary – Students here broke the Guinness World Record for the largest Thriller dance (242 people), and the school used Twitter to disseminate the video of the historic event. Prospective and current students can also gain lots of insight into the school by reading the numerous student blogs.
25. Culinary Institute of America - Check out tweets with top-notch culinary videos from the culinary school’s YouTube channel, links from the college’s recipe blog, culinary trivia challenges, and even innovative scholarship opportunities like this one: Got a great recipe for Turkey Leftovers? It could earn you up to $30,000 in CIA Scholarships http://bit.ly/GKGEE.
26. Dartmouth College has utilized Twitter to the max for continuous live tweeting of events, particularly the inauguration activities of new Dartmouth President Dr. Jim Yong Kim. The school’s feed of memorable quotes and key points streams like Cliff’s Notes of very long conferences. The school also promotes its activity on Facebook, YouTube and Flickr on its website.
27. Arizona State University – Arizona has hosted a back-to-school trivia challenge on Twitter, a contest in which students use Twitpic to show their school pride and win tickets to the football team’s home opener, and Twtpolls to learn more about its tweeps. I suppose you could say the school is Twitter-ific.
Bronze Medal Winners
28. University of California – Mark G. Yudof, president of the 10 campuses of UC is fun to follow because he tweets honestly and with humor: Received royalty statement from UC Press for my 1980s book: $3.11. Need to encourage more relatives to buy copies. The prez is also present on Facebook, and the university system’s Twitter feed is dedicated to sharing news from all UC campuses.
29. University of Texas at Dallas – In addition to maintaining an official Twitter feed and Facebook page, U. of Texas, Dallas is wise enough to employ Web 2.0 savvy faculty like Monica Rankin, history prof, and Dave Parry, assistant professor of emerging media and communications. Rankin experiments with Twitter in the classroom, and Parry packs his Twitter feed with intelligent and humorous social commentary: Class is so much more fun when you can relate it to something from The Daily Show, or The Colbert Report. Too true.
30. Everest College – This school tweets to help nontraditional students learn about education options and posts plenty of individualized encouragement on its Twitter feed. This is a school that really knows how to connect with each student. The quality of each tweet earns the school a bronze medal. Also, the chat option on the website allows prospective students to connect with a person in real time and get their questions answered about academic programs and opportunities.
31. Vanderbilt University – How about using Twitter to correct the occasional misconception? When a local news outlet ran a story saying that Vanderbilt was planning bonfires on campus to burn clothes and books infected with the swine flu (the news outlet took a paragraph about bonfires from a satirical column in the student paper and ran it as fact), the school tweeted to let people know the story was bogus and direct them to the school’s official H1N1 Web site. Vanderbilt also boasts an admissions blog and a Facebook page with about 10,000 fans.
32. The University of Idaho – Idaho gets a nod for creativity for its Twitter scavenger hunt – on “Vandal Spirit Fridays,” students tweet pics of themselves in full Vandal gear in front of a variety of campus hotspots to win prizes. The university maintains a strong presence on Facebook in addition to its 10 Twitter feeds.
33. Harvard University – It’s a given that Harvard will be home to a super-smart feed, but it turns out that the school’s tweets can be pretty useful, too: Happiness is contagious…each additional happy friend boosts your good cheer by 9% http://ow.ly/pfrx. And sometimes the posts skew a bit strange: Since 1987, Karl Baden has been quietly and consistently making a daily photograph of his own face http://bit.ly/pjBAX. Of course, Harvard is on Facebook, too – it was a Harvard student who founded the social networking site in the first place. And The Harvard Crimson, the school’s daily newspaper, is behind Harvard’s liveliest blog.
34. Louisiana State University - LSU has well over two dozen Twitter accounts, many of which feature fast-paced interaction with the school’s avid sports fans. Head football coach Les Miles delights his tweeps with promo codes for cheap game tickets, and even finds time to tweet moment-to-moment baseball game commentary with his sons in tow. The school’s main Facebook page has a whopping 123,000 plus fans, and LSU faculty members utilize key Web 2.0 technologies to enhance their courses. Geaux Tigers!
35. Marist College – Marist boasts more than a dozen Twitter feeds, but the account run by Tim Massie, chief public affairs officer and adjunct professor of communication and religious studies, is tops. Massie maintains a lively feed for Maristers to network and reminisce, featuring the cleverly coined “MaristMonday.” Why do I have to urge to break into song? What’s more, the school’s Facebook page gets plenty of attention from its fans, and the Marist Poll online is a veritable storehouse of data and analysis.
36. Marquette University – This U. makes the list for the high level of interaction it maintains with its followers and the sheer volume of accolades it receives on “Marquette Trivia Tuesdays” and the rest of the week. (Check out this video of Marquette’s favorite tweets.) More than 7,500 fans are active on the official Facebook page, too. Unless all these people are getting paid for their praise, Marquette must be one cool school.
37. New York University – NYU has quite a few feeds to its name – NYULocal, the daily campus news blog, is a super-cool account that’s linked to what is arguably the school’s preeminent blog. NYU is also Web 2.0 savvy because it employs Twitterific faculty members like Jay Rosen, associate professor of journalism. Rosen tweets provocative social and journalistic commentary on an hourly basis: When politics = left v. right, the Church of the Savvy can claim detachment. But what if politics = insiders v. outsiders? http://jr.ly/krtd. How does he get any work done?
38. North Carolina State University – NC State’s news feed posts pieces of interest like this link: Parenthood makes moms more liberal, dads more conservative (NC State study): http://bit.ly/4qM6AU and this video: Wood is the new coal? Energy really DOES grow on trees (if you toast them). http://bit.ly/XWO23. The school maintains a Facebook presence as well as a college blogging service and helpful blog directory.
39. Iowa State University – ISU claims more than 30 separate Twitter accounts, with all ISU-related tweets compiled on ISUTweets.com. And that doesn’t include faculty Twitterers like Scott McLeod, an associate professor and director of the university’s Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education, who often presents and links to incendiary content like this: Children, like all human beings, crave freedom. School is prison. http://bit.ly/IhVCH. The school’s “unofficial” sports page on Facebook boasts more than 11,000 fans, and ISU bloggers can be found all over the Web.
40. Oklahoma State University-Oklahoma City – OSU-OKC regularly tweets about the school’s very own Farmers Market, where every item sold is either grown or made in Oklahoma. Today’s enthusiasm: the natural peanut butter from OSU-OKC’s Farmers Market. I’m addicted to it these days. The career education school also has a strong presence on Facebook.
41. Clark University - Clark tweets a healthy mix of school news (including lineups for the school’s very own cinema that shows acclaimed foreign and independent films) and intriguing topics like this one: Quarter-life crisis isn’t all turmoil, says Clark prof/author who coined term ‘emerging adulthood’ http://tinyurl.com/rb552t. You can also find Clark on YouTube and Facebook.
42. Clarkson University – Current events are everything – some schools explore where they’ve been. On one particular feed, Clarkson tweets periodic “this day in Clarkson history” updates, highlighting everything from Clarkson’s first class of students to its inaugural skateboarding contest in 1977.
43. Elgin Community College – Elgin’s former director of communications and self-described “social media freak” Sarah Evans helped this Illinois college to launch a feed that is personable (and personal), featuring tons of links to cool sites and job postings. Evans has since established her own PR firm, but ECC is still working the web.
44. Furman University - There’s lots of fun going on over at Furman U. The school directs tweeps to Snopes to debunk the infamous urban legend of the Furman University Christian Knights, then on to the video of a campus squirrel with its head stuck in a cup.
45. George Mason University – Dan Cohen, director of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason, offers funny, useful tidbits on his Twitter feed: What a surprise. Universities admit to falsifying numbers for US News & World Report rankings. Read more.
46. Webster University – The school’s tweeter followed new president Dr. Elizabeth Stroble on her first day at the school, posting a stream of photos and memorable quotes. Plus, Webster’s feed got an instant status upgrade when Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, spoke at the school.
47. York College of Pennsylvania – Its relatively young feed is already filled with links to top-notch content like 10 ways to stay marketable when you’re out of work, how to write an MBA admissions essay, and 9 qualities that will rock your career.
48. The Agricultural Sustainability Institute at the University of California, Davis - Check out how the school maintains a fun, targeted feed on topics from research on organics to the economic viability of dairies. Here’s a sample: New piece on groundwater loss in CA feautures a photo from ASI’s field trip to the western San Joaquin Valley. Read more.
49. Auburn University – Auburn tweets relevant campus news for students using the hashtag #thisweekatau. Announcements range from cap and gown portrait date reminders, technology virus alerts, links to the school blog, and more.
Honorable Mention:
50. CampusTweet – Although not a college, CampusTweet is a directory of college and university tweeters, so it’s definitely worth a mention on our list. Go here to capture the pulse of the American college student and campus life.
[...] our own horns, an interesting link arrived at our browser this afternoon via a roundabout route. According to EduDemic, the college search site collegesurfing.com ran a feature during the Winter Olympics of “The [...]
[...] But my hopes are that with this blog, more people, or at least someone here at Eckerd will become more aware/want to become more aware of the social sphere and learn a little about what’s happening in the blogosphere. Outside of the Eckerd bubble, new media has become a normality; dominating cities, companies, and your friends in other universities. [...]