Office of the University Registrar

Late September brings with it a new academic year, but unfortunately it also ushers in flu season. This year, of course, H1N1 flu adds an additional threat to the health of our community.  The University has taken a proactive measure to help students fight this annual nuisance. UW volunteers prepared 10,000 flu kits to be distributed to students in the dorms, the Greek system and elsewhere on campus. Each bag contains thermometers, hand sanitizer, electrolyte tablets, pain reliever, and an information packet.

Producing such a large number of kits over two days required a concerted effort. Overseen by Campus Health Services, scores of students, staff and faculty took two-hour shifts in the HUB Monday and Tuesday to assemble the kits. Among them were a number of volunteers from the Office of the University Registrar. Thank you to these dedicated staff who took time from their busy schedules to help keep the campus healthy!

A short video of the assembly can be found on KIRO News’ website. Further details on the University’s flu-preparedness program can be found on Campus Health Services’ website.

Tomorrow marks the first day of 2009-2010 classes for most of our students. As the academic year gets underway, the Office of the University Registrar would like to welcome you. Our staff look forward to providing you with the support and guidance you need to make your year of learning rich and productive.

Be sure also to read the President’s welcome message for autumn 2009.

Today, the University announced the launch of the Constitution Day 2009 web site. The text of the message that was sent to all students is included below:

Dear student,

We look forward to your participation in the University of Washington community during  autumn 2009.  UW offers a wide variety of learning opportunities.  We hope you will pursue many of them.

As a recipient of Federal financial support, the University is required by Public Law 108-447 to make available an educational program on the U.S. Constitution as part of Constitution Day on September 17.  Since the University is not in session on the 17th, we are making available to you a website on the Constitution from September 11 to November 5, 2009.  The site is available now at http://depts.washington.edu/constday/

The site provides an overview of the history of the Constitution and a brief discussion of current constitutional debates, as well as links to other pages that provide additional information and resources.  There is also a bibliography of popular references and a list of courses at the University of Washington that address the Constitution.  In addition, the UW site contains links to a number of webcasts on the Constitution.We encourage you to kick-off your autumn quarter studies early and visit the University’s Constitution Day website at http://depts.washington.edu/constday/

Thank you,

UW Constitution Day

===

This message was sent to all students with email accounts at the University of Washington via the REGISTRAR-L email distribution list.  The Office of the Registrar uses this list to disperse important information to all students.

If you wish to contact the Constitution Day Team via email, the correct address to use is: constday@u.washington.edu

Last month saw two major Kuali milestones. First, the Kuali software project celebrated its fifth birthday August 30. Second, the first official version of Kuali Rice (KR) was introduced; the “community-source” software graduated from beta status with its 1.0 release.

According to its website (revamped for this new release), KR “provides an enterprise-class middleware suite of integrated products that allows for applications to be built in an agile fashion.” To describe it with a cooking metaphor, it’s the egg in cookie dough that helps bind everything together. KR includes modules for managing user identities and for transmitting messages among other components of the Kuali software suite, such as the financial package KFS and Kuali Student.

The UW is playing a significant role in the development of Kuali Student and Kuali Rice systems, with a member of the Office of the University Registrar serving on the team developing Kuali Student. We’ve detailed Kuali’s progress on this blog in order to keep the UW community abreast of a set of software tools that may power our own information systems some day.

This post is an update to a previous entry, available here: Carry the UW in your hand.

m.UW, the iPhone app created for the University community and named by student Shane Bunker, officially launched yesterday. It is available for free download at the iTunes store.

You can learn more about m.UW at the University’s mobile website, including a preview of its features if you don’t have an iPhone or iPod Touch.