Targets’ Tip is a start-up headquartered in Okemos, Michigan. Founded by Morteza Mahmoudi, Targets’ Tip was created to provide support for targets of academic harassment and supply data on the incidences, types, and contextual behaviors of academic harassment to improve the overall academic organizational health.

Academic harassment is a serious issue that affects all disciplines and people. One main issue is a lack of reliable and easily accessible resources available for targets of academic harassment.

Our user-friendly Sharing Advice on Academic Harassment software mitigates this problem by enabling targets to connect with those who can support them and provides options for users: as a target or survivor of academic harassment, and as a professional advisor.

Professional advisors are required to produce credentials in order to be approved by a system administrator.

After users on the platform sign up for an account, they select which specific types of harassment they are either struggling with or for which they can offer advice.

Based on the user’s selections and an advisor’s rating, the platform proposes matches for a target with an advisor or vice versa. The user requests to connect with one of their matches, and upon approval from the match, can chat online. After a conversation, the target is asked to rate their advisor, which factors into the rating of their advisor, helping future targets pick their match.

While keeping user data secure, Targets’ Tip collects instance data and feeds it into a customizable dashboard for administrators to view. This system is separate from the public platform.

Our application is available to access online and natively on iOS and Android. The front end is written in Dart utilizing Flutter while the back end utilizes Firebase.