Author: Tim Hart

During the September Brown Bag Lunch from noon to 1 p.m. Monday, Sept. 21 in 138 Hughes Metropolitan Complex, Crystal Dozier, associate professor and chair of Department of Anthropology and director of the Archaeology of Food Laboratory, will share stories about the Etzanoa Archaeological Field School.

Historical evidence indicates it was one of the largest Native American settlements in North America during the early 1600s. Ongoing field excavations by students continue to uncover how the town thrived and how its inhabitants interacted with early Spanish expeditions. This talk will give the archaeological context of the site and its history, along with the recent discoveries made by Wichita State students and faculty.

The Wichita State University Retiree Association Brown Bag Lunch Series features monthly presentations on topics of interest and gives you a chance to connect with current and former colleagues. All WSU employees and WSU retirees are welcome to attend. No registration is necessary. View the WSURA calendar for information about additional events.

Work on the website design refresh project has progressed through the summer months and the Web Team is ready to begin the countdown to launch. See the schedule for rollout and implementation.

During the August Brown Bag Lunch from noon to 1 p.m. Monday, Aug. 10 in 138 Hughes Metropolitan Complex, Brent Mai, dean, University Libraries, will share his extensive knowledge of Volga Germans. He serves as director of the Volga German Institute, and his father’s family is Volga German. The Volga Germans settled along the Volga River in southeastern European Russia during the 18th century, and many immigrated to Kansas beginning in 1874. He will speak on aspects of Volga German history and culture.

The Wichita State University Retiree Association Brown Bag Lunch Series features monthly presentations on topics of interest and gives you a chance to connect with current and former colleagues. All WSU employees and WSU retirees are welcome to attend. No registration is necessary. View the WSURA calendar for information about additional events.

Technology is fantastic when it works well, and we want to ensure it does just that at Wichita State. We need your insights on where WSU should focus its Information Technology (IT) efforts and what aspects of technology work well or need improvement by taking an anonymous seven-minute survey.

Your feedback will help us create the WSU Strategic Technology Plan, which will guide the university and its departments in future technology decisions. Responses are open through April 25.

Starting Monday, Aug. 5, Information Technology Services (ITS) will roll out a revamped myWSU portal. This upgrade is the first step on the road toward a modernized myWSU portal experience.

Here’s what’s new and improved:

• Mobile-friendly design: Access myWSU seamlessly on your smartphone or tablet with no more pinching and zooming.
• Sleeker interface: The look and feel more closely aligns with wichita.edu webpages.
• Clutter-free pages: Find what you need faster with better organization and prioritization of key links.
• New “Application for Degree” admin tab: Quickly access ADF features in a dedicated tab.

As with any upgrade, some features will be moved or retired, notably:

• Financial Advisor Channel: This channel has been phased out by the vendor, but you’ll still find this information elsewhere on the new myWSU.
• Student Work Study Balance Channel: This channel has also been phased out by the vendor.

ITS excited about these enhancements and believe it will make your experience with myWSU smoother and more intuitive. Stay tuned for more updates.

The Budget Advisory Committee (BAC), consisting of appointed faculty, staff, students and administrators, serves to host campus budget conversations to provide an educational and communicative platform regarding university finances.

As part of these efforts, the committee wishes to engage campus to gather input, ideas and opportunities from the WSU community that can positively impact financial outcomes and budgetary planning. Through the committee’s Idea Generator, thoughtful ideas can be shared in a transparent, inclusive and collaborative process to ensure all ideas – regardless of origin – can receive consideration based on its merit. Submitted ideas are open to all of campus to both view and leave feedback.

Those who submit events or activities in the WSU Calendar now have an additional category for the university community to utilize: “Shocker Neighborhood” is a category that can be chosen if your off-campus events or initiatives take place within the Shocker Neighborhood (bounded by K-96 to the north, Central to the south, I-35 to the south, and Oliver to the east), or if your events would be of interest to residents of this community.

The university community serves and is a partner with many of the USD 259 schools in the Shocker Neighborhood, as well as neighborhood organizations and businesses. It will be mutually beneficial to capture the opportunities in Shocker Neighborhood and provide an option to search for engagement opportunities in the neighborhood community.

The WSU Profiles feature of wichita.edu now supports the addition of pronouns. To add the optional pronouns, go to your WSU Profile page and edit by clicking on its copyright symbol and logging in with your Shocker ID and password. Click the lightbulb icon to check out the page, then go to Properties / Custom Settings. The Pronouns field is in the “Personal Information” section.

Tonight — Friday, May 13 — the wichita.edu web team will be conducting a maintenance step that will require a full site publish.  That means if you have unpublished pages or files on the staging server in the CMS, they may become public unless you secure your files.

If you have something that you do not want to be published, you can temporarily move the page to the recycle bin or, if you have higher permission levels, to your _training folder. Pages may be moved out of the recycle bin beginning on Saturday, May 14.

Beginning Nov. 1, a number of lots in the vicinity of Koch Arena will be reserved for Shocker Athletic Scholarship Organization parking three hours before Wichita State men’s basketball games. Anyone previously parked in these lots will need to move their cars at that time. Signage will be in place alerting drivers of the impending lot assignment changes.