After painstaking hours of planning, developing and processing, a sense of comfort washed over Dean Fryman and Gabriella Saadia as they saw club after club appear on the site. 

Unlike the short-lived Club Fair, Club Hub persists year-round, providing information about every St. John’s club in one place. 

Ever since the summer of 2021, Saadia, a junior, and Lori Fryman, the Upper School Assistant Dean of Students, had been working on Club Hub. Though, for many months, not much information existed about the project.

“It was this mysterious nebula for a while, and we had no idea what it was going to do,” Johnnycake officer Noelle Alexander said.

In recent years, the pandemic has limited the ability of clubs to share information and attract new members. As a result, conversation sparked between Saadia and Fryman to digitize Club Fair, but they ran into roadblocks along the way. 

When Fryman and Saadia were finalizing the website last spring, some clubs had not yet elected their leaders for this year, so they could not fill in that information on the site. In order to avoid this in the future, they attached forms on the site to change club pages and even create a new club, working toward an autonomous website.

Saadia hopes that by attaching forms to the site, club leaders will help Fryman and her “maintain up-to-date information for their pages.”

Even though Club Hub can be used by all Upper School students, the target audience for Club Hub is freshmen. 

Fryman considers Club Hub a “tool to help all students, especially freshmen, find a group that shares an interest, hobby or passion.” 

Helping students “plug in” is not a foreign concept for Saadia. Her brother Ethan (‘21) created the Mav App, which his sister now manages. Saadia learned to code on her own, and she plans to pursue a career in user interface and experience. 

“We’re similar in how we enjoy creating platforms to provide a more user-friendly experience, and with the Club Hub, I hope to expand students’ opportunities on campus,” Saadia said.

In recent years, the School would help clubs with publicity through a shared Google Slides presentation, which would be presented during advisory.

After months of waiting, students can now use Club Hub to incorporate their passions and build their identity and community around them.