Hey everyone, Couple of months ago I became a GitHub Campus Expert. It's been an interesting journey from getting selected and going through training. Today I am here to tell you the phases a student goes through while becoming a GitHub Campus Expert. I have divided this blog into 2 sections.

1) Pre-Selection phase and

2) Post-Selection phase.

This will help you get a clear picture of how GitHub makes its program different and ideal for building and community growth. Let's get to it.

What is GitHub Campus Expert Program?

It is a program to help college/university student leaders build, grow and expand their communities. GitHub provides tools, training, sponsorships, etc to help the community overcome their struggles. GitHub Campus Experts are trained with public speaking, events management, and exercises to analyze your community. This program selects student leaders twice a year (in two cohorts). Once in February and in August.

Now that you have an idea about what is GitHub Campus Experts program is, we can get started with the pre-selection phase and post-selection phase.

Pre-Selection Phase:

GitHub opens the application twice every year. You can check the progress of the application here. The Pre-Selection phase is divided into 2 parts. Essay and video resume. This helps the GitHub Education team to understand more about you and your community. The essay part consists of 3-5 questions which are based on the analysis of your community struggles, aim, etc. Once your essays gets submitted and selected you head to video resume part. You have to record 3-5 min video focusing on certain points such as introduction, the aim of community, and similar things. After submitting the video resume you just have to wait for the result to come out.

If your essays get selected then only you will be proceeding to the video resume stage

Personal tips for getting through the pre-selection phase:

1) Have a clear aim statement about your community.

2) Try to keep your essays focussed and around the aim of the community.

3) Be particular about the point you are trying to convey.

Post-Selection Phase:

This is the most important phase. because in this phase you go through training to understand and develop yourself and your community. Once you are selected by your essays and video resume you will be invited to GitHub Campus Experts GitHub organization and to an onboarding event. Where you will be explained about the program and training methods and will get to meet other new campus experts. After the onboarding, you will have your own private GitHub repo in the organization where you will update your training essays. You will be provided with all the templates and materials for your training. You will be trained for public speaking, git and github, community analysis, how to grow community, how to become a good leader, community ethics, etc. And you will have to write comprehensive essays following the training with your community into focus. There are in total 6 modules which you have to complete before a certain deadline (This deadline can be extended by communicating with the program manager). The training videos are pre-recorded which means you can watch them whenever and wherever you want. Once you complete your essays they will be reviewed by the Campus Experts team and you'll be suggested updations (if any).

You will be submitting these essays for review in the form of a pull request so once your pull request is merged you will get "GitHub Campus Experts" badge on your github profile. What next? Now you are almost there, Next you have to create your campus experts profile which will be visible on the github campus experts website. You will be provided with spreadsheets, issue templates to get support from the team for all your needs.

My take on GitHub Campus Experts program

I personally really like the program. The differentiator of this program from other program is that upon selection it does not just give you a tag but provide you with the training, guidance, and support you need to develop yourself and your community. You are told about the ethics & values the term communities carry and what makes the term 'community' stand out.

Thank you so much for reading 💖

Like | Follow | Subscribe to the newsletter.

Catch me on my socials here: bio.link/kaiwalya