A laptop with The Perch on screen

The Perch for Students, Faculty & Staff

Welcome to The Perch, your central hub for connecting with the Lehigh community. From campus news and helpful resources to updates from clubs, organizations, and colleges, The Perch brings everything together in one place so you can stay informed and engaged.

Visit The Perch

Explore The Perch

The Perch is your central hub for campus communications—bringing together announcements, events, resources, and stories from across the entire Lehigh community. It’s the only place where you can see content from all colleges, departments, and organizations in one location.

On The Perch, you can:

  • Explore Announcements & Events – Stay informed with campus updates and see upcoming events automatically pulled from the university calendar.
  • Follow Topics – Subscribe to areas of interest to receive communications from those groups, or browse a topic page to view related content in one place.
  • Engage with Content – Read stories, watch videos, and connect with others through likes and comments.
  • Bookmark for Later – Save posts and videos to revisit anytime under your profile.
  • Share with the Community – Publish your own posts and select the most relevant topic to reach the right audience.

All participation on The Perch should reflect Lehigh’s Principles of Our Equitable Community.

Perch Mobile App on phone

Take The Perch on the Go

Stay connected wherever you are with The Perch mobile app. Access announcements, events, and resources right from your phone or tablet.

Learn more about The Perch Mobile App

Publishing with The Perch

The Perch is more than a place to stay informed—it’s also a platform for sharing communications. Faculty, staff, and students can become Perch Partners to publish on behalf of their college, department, office, or club.

As a Perch Partner, you can:

  • Create Topics – Build spaces for your area that are exclusive to your group or open for others to follow.
  • Enable Contributions – Choose whether the wider Lehigh community can submit content to your topics.
  • Publish Once, Reach Many – Share stories across email, the mobile app, The Perch itself, and even campus digital signs.
  • Track Engagement – Access analytics to understand how your audience is opening, reading, and clicking on your content.
Become a Perch Partner

The Power Behind The Perch

The Perch is powered by Firstup, a trusted communications platform used by universities and organizations worldwide. At Lehigh, it brings together news, events, and resources in one place and makes it easy to share them across multiple channels—including email, mobile, web, and campus digital signage.

FAQs

The Perch is Lehigh’s digital communications platform that connects students, faculty, and staff to each other and to the latest news, resources, and happenings across campus. It provides a customized experience for the campus community and is accessible on desktop or through the mobile app to anyone logged in with a Lehigh account.

The Perch is powered by Firstup, an enterprise communications platform originally launched by the software company SocialChorus. You may see the Firstup name in the mobile app, in the URL, or in emails you receive. Even when you see Firstup, you are still accessing The Perch.

Faculty, staff and students who are logged into their Lehigh account via SSO (single sign on) can access The Perch via desktop or app at any time.

Firstup is the technology platform on which The Perch is built. SocialChorus is the name of the software company that launched Firstup. You may notice either of these names in the URL for The Perch, on the mobile app or through email communications that are sent to users.

While there is no single solution to the university's diverse communications needs, the unified system behind The Perch can bring together communications to faculty, staff and enrolled students from across various Lehigh departments, offices, and organizations in more effective and collaborative ways. Additionally, The Perch can be experienced wherever and whenever community members prefer either via email, website or mobile app.

The Perch intends to connect the campus community to each other and to news, information and resources that are relevant and useful. As Perch Partners join the platform and topics are created, more and more information will be made available to users in a customized and meaningful way, helping to create a more streamlined and enjoyable experience. You can also engage and react to news that is shared and connect with other campus community members around announcements and information. The more you engage with the platform, the more value you will get out of it.

Data may be collected with regard to your actions taken in The Perch such as topics followed, posts read, and engagement activities including liking posts. This information is used to analyze usage of The Perch in aggregate to improve user experience and understand content and resources that are relevant to the campus community.

Data about individual use may be reviewed when the “Report” feature is used with regard to concerning user comments or when troubleshooting user issues related to received communications.

Keep in mind that The Perch is an internally-facing platform for the Lehigh campus community. Comments should be on topic and be respectful to colleagues, fellow classmates, administration and the community in general.

Engaging in any harassing, threatening, intimidating, or discriminatory conduct or making maliciously false statements on The Perch is prohibited and may result in disciplinary action or a violation of the University’s Code of Conduct.

Lehigh reserves the right to moderate or remove comments when not in alignment with the above or with the Principles of our Equitable Community. Repeat offenders may be subject to removal from participation in The Perch experience.

The main benefit of logging in to The Perch is to view information that's intentionally being made available exclusively to members of the Lehigh community--faculty, staff and currently enrolled undergraduate and graduate students. At times, there may be posts that pertain specifically to just one of these member groups and the only way to ensure messages reach the intended role is to require a login as with other University SSO services. To make sure you don't miss out on the important news, information and resources you need, always login using your Lehigh userid and not your email address or department's email account.

No, Lehigh (or Firstup) will NOT have access to data or personal information on your phone outside of the app. Lehigh will not be able to monitor your location or activity through your use of The Perch platform.

Yes, using The Perch is completely voluntary to the performance of your job duties as an employee or responsibilities as a Lehigh student. The platform is intended to enhance your connection and become the primary spot for Lehigh staff, faculty and students to get the latest Lehigh news, resources and information, engage with one another, and build community.

Use The Perch on your desktop at work or at home. Enjoy the benefits of The Perch without using a mobile phone.

Perch Shortcuts are quick links located at the top of The Perch that give students, faculty, and staff easy access to commonly used resources and tools. These include Connect Lehigh, the Lehigh Directory, Google Services, CourseSite, and other popular apps, sites, and services. Shortcuts are tailored by audience, so the links you see are customized—faculty, staff, and students each have access to the most relevant resources for their needs. View this step-by-step guide on how to access shortcuts.