Miguel Ortiz-Garcia, a UC Santa Barbara undergraduate student majoring in Communication, was seeking an internship that would strengthen his leadership skills and make a positive impact on the UCSB student population. Luck was on Ortiz-Garcia’s side, when stumbled upon a communications listserve that was looking for a strategy and marketing intern for an exciting new app: College Sauce.

This would be an app developed by and for UCSB students, eventually to expand beyond this campus. Ortiz-Garcia applied, was accepted and immediately joined the College Sauce team becoming its newest strategy and marketing director.

Founded by UCSB alum Sarah Boggs, the College Sauce app was designed by a group of 30 UCSB students. The goal is for students to build stronger connections with one another and gain another resource that can help them academically and socially.

Features on the app include: group chats for classes from all UCSB divisions, directly scheduling study sessions with classmates on the app, a map of UCSB and IV with pinned events including local markets and movie showings, and even a book marketplace to buy and sell second hand textbooks.

The launch date is April 1st and Ortiz-Garcia recently sat down for an interview to talk about the development of College Sauce, his experience leading his teams, and future plans for the app.  

Q: What makes College Sauce a unique app that would benefit UCSB students?

A: I’m always on the lookout for our competitors. On Yik Yak [an app for students to anonymously connect with others in their college], there are so many students that say that they don’t have friends and are feeling lonely, and College Sauce wants to reach out to those students and try to give them a pleasurable college experience. We also want to make sure that College Sauce benefits those who already have a good social circle and help them expand that… The goal of College Sauce is to have a more centered conversation group and for anything social, but especially focused on academics.

Q: What was the process of developing the app like?

A: We have different teams such as the UIUX team, who design all the screens on the app, and programmers who make the magic happen and program the app. As the strategy and marketing lead, I am in charge of managing the events, social media, and content creation teams, as well as coming up with strategies to bring more awareness and put College Sauce out there. I make sure that the team is on track, understands the mission of College Sauce, and that our social media content is engaging and entertaining to the UCSB population. We go in with the perspective of a UCSB student and think: what would they like and want in an app?

Q: What have you gained from this experience?

A: I have gained a great deal from this experience and gotten the chance to strengthen my leadership, interpersonal communication, and organization skills. I have learned how to assign tasks to individuals without sounding demanding or rude and navigate through how we can best handle a situation and have a conversation if the student cannot deliver for their team. It’s been a really enjoyable experience that has taught me a lot.

Q: What is your personal favorite thing about College Sauce?

A: My favorite thing about College Sauce is that it’s an all-access hub to resources that’ll improve your academic life but it also helps with building connections with fellow students. We provide the sauce to a student’s college life.

Q: What are some future plans to continue to expand the app?

A: Once we have reached 6000 users at UCSB, we would like to expand the College Sauce app to other campuses. We want to replicate our goals if it’s successful at UCSB, and identify which features on our app are the strongest, to support the development of those features to make it easier for the user to use.

For potential new features in the future, we are thinking about having a syllabus network or database on College Sauce, where it gives the user the ability to understand the class they are taking more, as well as a tutor program where students can find an upperclass mentors to tutor them in our class. To stay updated with all things College Sauce related, our Instagram is @collegesauce.

Eunice Ho is a third-year Biopsychology major. She wrote this article for her Digital Journalism course.