St. Thomas has launched a new app for students called U of St. Thomas – Minnesota.

The app allows current students to reserve study rooms, see club meetings and events, check dining hall menus and view their meal plan balance. The app was designed by the Application Development and Cloud team led by Benjamin Durrant. Benjamin also sought help for the development of the app within the university’s departments.

“The app has been in development for nine months, but the capabilities that the app uses have been developed for a couple of years,” Durrant said.

Durrant advocated for the project, led the development team and helped form committees that decided the app’s features. 20 members from various departments formed the steering committee. The app was designed by a designer in the marketing department.

The St. Thomas app is currently available only to iOS users.

“75 to 80% of campus mobile traffic was iOS, so we started there,” Durrant said.

Students with iOS smartphones can download the app from the App Store. Android users will be able to download it within the next month.

Durrant is excited for the future of the app, which he hopes will include a notification system and other features.

“Around 600 people have already installed the app, which is great only two weeks after launch,” Durrant said. “As we add more features that number should continue to rise.”

Sophomore Mairin Barrett uses the app for quick access to information.

“I like checking the menu for The View…I like that Canvas app is linked on here, it’s a nice shortcut,” Barrett said.

She found out about the app over J-Term when it first launched.

“We needed something like this because we have so many platforms, but now that it’s all in one location,” Barrett said.

Durrant hopes that the app will help students accomplish important tasks, make the campus services and data more user friendly, and build an audience outside of students where staff, alumni, faculty and visitors could also use the app.

Students can give feedback by contacting the Tech Desk.

Andrés Tejeda can be reached at agtejeda@stthomas.edu.