HerCampus.com attempts to help women with style, health

HerCampus.com, a top online magazine for college women, made its debut at Sam Houston State University this week making it the first of its kind to ever have been produced on campus.

Her Campus was launched in September 2009 when undergraduate students Windsor Hanger, Stephanie Kaplan and Annie Wang had the idea to create a site to reach college women around the nation while working on the campus lifestyle and fashion online magazine at Harvard University.

According to Kaplan, the CEO and Editor-in-Chief of Her Campus, the website has grown to have about a million viewers per month and more than 200 universities have their own campus branch.

Every branch has a staff made up of students from each university updating weekly stories that relate to their campus. Staff members follow the Her Campus motto "A Collegiette's Guide to Life," to target young women who are looking for tips on style, health, love, careers and more.  

Last semester, twin sisters Lauren and Morgan Hall decided to start a Her Campus branch at SHSU by getting the idea from following them on Twitter. After noticing that there was nothing similar being done on campus, Lauren Hall applied to run the magazine at SHSU.

"I looked into it and thought it would be something fun to start at Sam, so I did," Lauren Hall, Editor-in-Chief of the SHSU branch said.

The sisters began recruiting their classmates and friends for their staff and created a Facebook and Twitter to promote the online magazine. Her Campus-Sam Houston currently has 500 views per week; however they hope to soon rival other universities who have 20,000 views per week.   

The online magazine already looks promising to become a big hit on campus; now going into their third week of publication, they have made their name known with their local stories.

"I like the idea of someone cataloging Sam Houston events," Rachel Drewes, sophomore at SHSU said. "If I can't go, at least I can see pictures and read about it."

Although staff members do not get paid for running the magazine, they enjoy the chance to get other girls interested in the things that concern them around campus.

"I love that I have the chance to entertain girls with writing," Morgan Hall said.

The girls say that it is definitely stressful to come up with story ideas and run on deadline, but with the help of the team members, they will make their branch a success.

"I just want girls to be able to visit the HC site when they're bored or need to relieve some stress from school work," Lauren Hall said. "I want them to hear about other Sam students and know what's going on in the lives of other Bearkats."

Collegiette's can check out Her Campus-Sam Houston every week at www.hercampus.com/samhouston. Students can also follow them on Twitter @HerCampusSHSU or on Facebook at facebook.com/HCSamHouston.

Editor's note: Sofia is listed as a staff member for HerCampus.com.