Students throughout Washington University frequent the Internet for all sorts of needs, be it e-mail, shopping or connecting with friends. Now they have an all-encompassing site for their web crawling needs – WUlife.
The original idea for the Web site was sparked when Jim Mourey, 2006 alumnus and intern for the Office of Student Activities (OSA) and Julie Thornton, director of Student Activities, tried to solve the problem of connecting all of the web entities of the University in one place.
“[We wondered] how could we change the student activities Web site to be something like a portal for getting involved on campus,” said Thornton. “[It was] originally just about getting involved on campus and then we realized we needed more than just that.”
As the WUlife site Web states it’s “your one-stop shop for everything WU.” Upon entering the site, students are met with links to a multitude of pages related to both the University and general student interests. Links range from e-mail and WebSTAC to Facebook and St. Louis exploration locations.
WUlife will continue to develop as people conceive of new ideas, said Thornton who is asking for input so she can update the Web site.
“[We are asking people,] what do you think about this concept, what’s it missing, what does it need for it be helpful for you?” said Thornton.
Some of WUlife’s inspiration came after Mourey’s internship with Yahoo.
“When you go to a site like Yahoo or Google, they have the news, e-mail, weather,” said Mourey. “We wanted a [site] that included all the student resources e-mail, menus, directories; all of the basic things for Wash. U. students and all the fun things like Facebook, dictionary.com, cnn.com.”
In the creation of the Web site it was important that it be different from the main University home page.
“It’s an attempt to help students to make it easy to find things on the Web site,” continued Thornton. “It differs in the regard that it is a one stop shopping. It is fun looking, has brighter colors and more appealing to the eye.”
Freshman Dan Brewster feels similarly.
“I think it’s a huge improvement.because the Wash. U. Web site tries to be the homepage for everything and students really need a page of their own to take them to the sites they visit. The Wash. U. site doesn’t really do that.”
OSA has done much to get the word out. According to Thornton, they notified advisors of clubs, sent it to all of the student groups and distributed an all-school e-mail. Brewster said that he was told about it during orientation.
The Web site is off to a very strong start with over 14,000 hits from over 2,000 users in the first half of September, according to the site’s webmaster Corey Arnold. Even so, many students at the University have not yet heard of the online page, and Thornton, Mourey and Brewster feel that there’s still a lot that can be done with it.
“I would love for it to be integrated better with the other services,” said Brewster.
Thornton agreed, describing a much more personal page would come up, tailored to each student.
“If students feel they can make it better we encourage them to go to OSA,” said Mourey. “[This is] something to get the ball rolling [and it’s] not in final stage.that’s part of the whole message.”
To access the site, visit www.wulife.wustl.edu.