We’re almost through the first week of fall classes at the University of Florida. It’s always nice to see so many people return from summer travels and to see so many new students come to UF for the first time (or the first time for classes, having only been here in the past for Preview tours and for games). In fall, it’s fairly common for students to be looking around and seeming lost. At 34, I’m clearly an adult on campus where the average age seems to be a permanent 18-22, and so I try to be prepared for questions (often these questions begin with a shaky voice saying “ma’am?”) on where different buildings are and information on how one gets to where.
UF is huge in terms of the importance for UF’s role as a public, land-grant institution, in terms of research impact, and for so much more, including simply having a very large main campus. While I try to be prepared and to be as helpful as possible, I often don’t know the names at all or not the official names of buildings on campus. In prior years, I carried around paper campus maps for the first few weeks of fall so that I could be helpful using the map and giving the maps to those in need. This year, I’ve been relying entirely on online resources and it’s gone very well thanks to several key resources.
First, the UF Campus Map has recently been updated and this great resource is now much easier to use: http://campusmap.ufl.edu/
UF also has an iPhone App (made by a UF student, Brian Dubno) that includes the campus map, bus information, and other essential resources: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ufmobile/id329199096?mt=8
Because the UF campus is so large, buses are used to get around and there’s another app specifically for bus information, including the real-time bus location: http://ufl.transloc.com/info/mobile
2012-08-24