Southwest Baptist University News Release
Contact: Sharina Smith, Office of Marketing & Communications
417-328-1803 / ssmith@sbuniv.edu
BOLIVAR, Mo. – Southwest Baptist University will begin a new era of online services on June 1, 2011, for students, faculty, and staff as it launches several new online services. MySBU, the University-branded Web portal built with Datatel Portal software and Microsoft SharePoint® technology, will integrate tightly with the University’s Datatel Colleague® enterprise resource planning software, providing users with timely and pertinent information at any time, from anywhere.
“MySBU will deliver substantial value to the University community by increasing productivity and Web services to students, faculty, and staff, said David Bolton, director of administrative computing at Southwest Baptist University. “All current web-based services will be encapsulated into the MySBU portal with single sign-on capabilities which will ease end-users’ frustration when accessing these various services. MySBU will allow the University to segment and tailor messages to students instead of broadcasting them to the entire student body as now is done. This will greatly reduce the number of e-mails students receive daily.”
Bolton said, “From the beginning of the portal project, students were our main focus. “Students told us that they receive so many e-mails that they often overlook important messages. Our students are logging into numerous applications, all over the campus network to receive vital academic and institutionally related information. MySBU will quickly eliminate this and save them an immense amount of time and frustration.”
According to Bolton, students’ difficulty in finding information easily and rapidly sometimes results in their being unaware of important campus events. “MySBU will help our students feel more connected by alerting them of campus events and by providing more efficient student services—all resulting in a stronger sense of community,” Bolton said. “Now they will have the information they need at their fingertips anywhere, using Internet access and a familiar browser interface, whether on a desktop computer, laptop, smart phone or mobile device.”
The MySBU portal will integrate with the University’s new cloud based services, Microsoft Live@edu. These services, available to all portal users, include anywhere access to a 10GB mailbox using Outlook Live e-mail accessible across the web or mobile device, 25GB personal file storage space on Windows Live SkyDrive, and use of Microsoft Office applications including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.
In connection with the release of the MySBU portal, SBU will be releasing a new Mobile Access application called MOX. This mobile application will provide prospective students, students, faculty, staff, and alumni and friends with anytime access to the important information they need – courses, events, notifications, important phone numbers, news, maps, and more. MOX will be released for use on the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Google Android, and BlackBerry mobile devices. Access by other mobile devices will be released in the future.
Vice President for Information and Technology Services Dr. Bob McGlasson said, “The Information and Technology Services team has been working on these new services for over a year. It’s been a total team effort and we are looking forward to providing these new services to the SBU family.”
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Southwest Baptist University is a leader among private universities in truly integrating Christ-centered academic pursuits with comprehensive professional programs at an affordable price. At SBU, the faculty and staff create a caring, academic community to prepare students to be servant leaders in a global society. For more information, visit www.SBUniv.edu.
SBU’s Office of Marketing and Communications is available to news media 24 hours a day at (417) 399-7918.
