New site available to students
By Emily Baker
Staff Reporter

Beginning today, TCU students should have available to them a new personalized portal that will offer features like TCU links, e-mail, weather and news on one Web site — my.tcu.edu — to compensate for a jumbled TCU Web site, said David Edmondson, Information Services Assistant Provost.

“The TCU Web page is difficult to wander through because it is supposed to be everything for everybody,” Edmondson said. “This is a way for people to get what they are interested in.”

Users can change the appearance of my.tcu.edu to suit their taste. They can also customize it to have the information and resources they want including their TCU e-mail, class schedule, maps, and links to FrogNet, Student Government and the Writing Center, said Josh Harmon, TCU system analyst who worked on the my.tcu.edu project.

Edmondson said my.tcu.edu is also a communication channel to let students know if classes are canceled due to weather, for example.

Though most students didn’t have my.tcu.edu available to use until today, some said the idea of the site is appealing.

Senior radio-TV-film major Josiah Millersaid he plans to “check it out.”

“It would be kind of nice because they don’t have a link from the TCU site to the e-mail,” he said. “If the TCU (information) and my e-mail were at the same spot, I’d probably make (my.tcu.edu) my home page.”

This Web site is also a step towards making everything at TCU Web-based, Edmondson said.

“This is a logical mechanism to tie to that goal,” he said. “At some point, everything you do at TCU will be a Web process.”

There was a “tremendous” cost to create my.tcu.edu, Edmondson said, but he declined to say what that price tag was. Six new servers, or 12 processors, are required to support the 9,500 users of the system, Harmon said. The servers are the computers to which my.tcu.edu users are networked.

“It won’t cost any student fees,” Edmondson said. “It came out of the university budget.”
Faculty and staff will have access to my.tcu.edu beginning Feb. 3, said Kim Weber, User Services manager.

Edmondson said students should remember to log off my.tcu.edu because if they do not, another user can access it.

Students can attend training sessions this week to learn how to use the portal. Sessions are scheduled from 1-3 p.m.todayand noon-2 p.m. Thursdayin the Library Training Lab, Room 219, Weber said. Documentation that explains how to use the Web site is available at (my.tcu.edu).

Emily Baker