Webmaster

So here I am, my first year of college solidly under my belt, and as I sit here thinking to myself, I realized that I’d done things that I never thought I would a year ago. I decided to compile a small list.

1) Jumping out of an airplane. Let me start by saying this: I had NEVER flown before this day. Ever. And to date I’ve never landed in an airplane. It was by far one of the best experiences of last fall, and I’m absolutely thrilled to have done it. It cost about $200, but that honestly didn’t matter. It’s an experience unlike any other and everyone should try it.

2) A year ago, when I clicked future students on the front page of missouristate.edu, I never imagined that I’d be working for the people that maintain it. I’ve always been a decent web coder, but it’s pretty surreal to design a web application that thousands of people use. For example, if you’ve used people search a lot, you’ll notice it’s had quite a few changes over the past few months. That’s all me, ladies and gentleman, and I’m still blown away by the opportunities I’ve had through this organization.

3) Founding a student organization. While this isn’t really an experience everyone will have, I was a key role in getting the Missouri State University Academic Quiz Bowl Club officialized. After playing with them for about a year, we FINALLY found a sponsor and have been pushed through the bureaucratic system of becoming “official”. It’s a pretty cool experience.

4) Putting on a campus program. Also, while this is an atypical situation, I feel that it was an interesting experience. Every residence hall has a hall council, which plans programs and events for the building. I was on a hugely successful hall council first semester, and am proud to have had the opportunity to serve with each of them. They’re a great bunch of people and putting on programs (I did the ‘To Write Love on Her Arms’ program in Hutchens House) with them was simply amazing.

5) What do you get when you have Brown, Washington University – St. Louis, Harvard, MIT, Carnegie-Mellon, Stanford, Chicago University, University of Illinois – Urbana-Campaign, MS&T, Truman State University, Mizzou, Ohio State, Michigan State, Rutgers, UCLA and UCSD all in one building? Why obviously, a quiz bowl tournament. Attending ACF Nationals as part of the MSU team was amazing, and meeting with people from the top universities in the country is a phenomenal experience.

This is a short list of some of my most memorable experiences this year, what are some of yours?

Webmaster

If you dislike the fact that all of your information is disclosed on the people search website, you may rest a little easier now.

The wonderful folks over at Missouri State University’s Department of Web & New Media have taken measures to protect your information that you don’t want people to see by implementing a “Hide from People Search” option, located here. While the ability to hide yourself isn’t inherently new, this way of providing it is. Previous to this implementation, you would have to have a FERPA hold put on yourself, which would then complicate everything surrounding your user account with the university, and could even limit what positions you could hold on student government, as some require your position within the organization to be public.

In addition to this, the whole search look has been revamped, and those of you that may have the FireFox plugin Operator may now add people to your email’s contact list directly from the detailed results page. You may wonder why we need these features, as probably less than 1% of FireFox users have this plugin, but Missouri State’s website takes an active stance to stay up-to-date with emerging technologies. Implementing hCards is not difficult, but it’s another way to stay ahead of the game. The functionality is provided for those that would want it.