Campus Connect: A Role-Based Campus Social Networking Platform

Campus Connect is a full-stack campus social networking platform that unifies students, faculty, alumni, and administrators through a role-based digital ecosystem for communication, notice dissemination, and professional networking. Recent research on alumni portals and alumni–student interaction platforms underscores the growing need for centralized, secure, and engaging web-based systems that support mentorship, career guidance, and institutional collaboration. This paper presents the design and implementation of Campus Connect—built with React 18, TypeScript, Node.js/Express, Prisma ORM, and SQLite—and situates it within contemporary alumni and campus interaction platforms. A structured literature review of ten post-2021 works on alumni portals and interaction platforms is provided, followed by a detailed discussion of system architecture, security design, core features, and research applications. The paper demonstrates how Campus Connect operationalizes best practices identified in the literature while extending scope beyond alumni to serve the entire campus community.