By Lori Bredemeyer, Staff Writer

When faculty and students return to school next fall, they can expect to see differences in Webmail, Blackboard and myACU after a complete upgrade this summer.

The biggest changes will be for myACU, which will get a new look and new features. Information Technology is planning to have a campus-wide calendaring system, a new way to receive announcements tailored to students, and a way to log in once to myACU and also gain access to Webmail, Blackboard and other services with a single sign-in, said George Saltsman, director of Educational Technology.

All students will have their own personal calendar, which students will be able to customize and choose events and organizations to be included on it. James Langford, director of Web Integration and Programming, said at first, groups of friends and clubs will be able to create calendars with their important dates, and eventually teachers will be able to put due dates and other times on a calendar that each of their students can have.

Saltsman said he thinks the calendar will be a useful device for the campus.

“We don’t know quite how the acceptance of that is going to be,” Saltsman said, “but we think that we’re going to get a lot of faculty who will like that, because it’s a much more efficient way of communicating. I think it’s going to be a very productive tool for faculty and staff.”

He also said he hopes to have a program that will allow students to subscribe to only the announcements they want to receive.

The upgrade will consume most of the summer and will last until Welcome Week. Services will be down May 23-25 and July 7 and 8, and Blackboard will be down during all Summer II courses.