Campus Connect

Inspiration

Starting at a new campus is hard, especially for new and transfer students trying to find their community. We wanted Muslim students at UCSD to have an easy way to meet someone who has already been through it, and to find professionals in their field.

## What it does Campus Connect has two parts:

Buddy matching: students fill out a short form and get matched with older students of the same gender, based on major, transfer status, and shared
interests. Each match shows why it fits, and students can widen the search from UCSD to all of California.
Mentor groups: students browse Muslim professionals by field and request to join a group, so one mentor can support several students.

The MSA then makes introductions at a kickoff event, so students' contact details stay private.

## How we built it We used React, Vite, and Tailwind CSS, with React Router for navigation and Vitest for testing the matching logic. Matching is a simple scoring function, and
data is stored in the browser with localStorage. We built it with Claude Code, explored three visual directions with an AI design skill, and deployed on GitHub Pages.

## Challenges we ran into

Turning "good match" into clear rules, including what counts as a related major
Connecting students without exposing their contact details
Making the large Arabic word مالس (salam) fit cleanly on every screen size
Getting page links to work on static hosting

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

A design built around the word مالس, which appears right to left, the way Arabic is written
Matches that explain why two people were paired
Mentor groups that show open spots at a glance
A demo panel for adding people live and resetting the app

## What we learned We learned that small product decisions matter as much as the code, like same-gender matching and keeping contact details private. We also learned to test in a real browser, since screenshots caught visual bugs that our unit tests couldn't.

## What's next for Campus Connect