In the first phase, a section of Phillip Fulmer Way between the stadium and the Hearing and Speech Center will be closed from June 4 to June 11. Traffic from Cumberland Avenue will be rerouted to Peyton Manning Pass, and traffic from Lake Loudoun Boulevard will be rerouted to Tee Martin Drive.

In the second phase, the intersection of Phillip Fulmer Way and Peyton Manning Pass will close on June 12 and reopen on June 19. Vehicles still will have access to Staff Lot 9 from Peyton Manning Pass, but northbound traffic on Phillip Fulmer Way from Lake Loudoun Boulevard will be rerouted to Tee Martin Drive. Traffic from Cumberland Avenue will be rerouted to Middle Drive.

The third phase will begin on June 20 with the closure of Phillip Fulmer Way from just south of Middle Drive to just before the intersection with Peyton Manning Pass. The sidewalk on the east side of Phillip Fulmer Way will be open. Delivery vehicles and buses still will be able to access the Gate 21 entrance to the stadium, but the road will be closed to traffic until August 5. Traffic from Cumberland Avenue will be rerouted to Middle Drive, and traffic from Lake Loudoun Boulevard will be rerouted to Tee Martin Drive.

Access to Staff Lot 30 on Phillip Fulmer Way will be available throughout the project.

For more information on campus traffic and parking, visit the Cone Zone website.

Yamagata-Lynch previously developed and implemented the university’s new online master’s degree program in instructional technology.

“I’m really interested in looking into our resources and how students can take advantage of what we have to offer during the summer,” said Yamagata-Lynch. “I’m excited to look at how we can take advantage of our innovative solutions and partnerships in ways that we’re not already.”

The Summer Term Task Force was formed in 2012 to assess the university’s current summer operations, identify existing strengths and weaknesses, study best practices, and develop strategies to improve the overall effectiveness of the summer term. A team of administrators, faculty, and students worked together to develop key recommendations, which include minimizing students’ barriers to accessing the summer term, incentivizing efficient instruction with a tuition-sharing funding model, and improving marketing, among others.

Members of the task force will now form an advisory committee that will help guide Yamagata-Lynch in carrying out the recommendations.

Before coming to UT, Yamagata-Lynch taught at Northern Illinois University where she also was the instructional technology program coordinator. She holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of the Sacred Heart in Tokyo, a master’s in instructional systems technology from Indiana University, and a double Ph.D. in educational psychology and instructional systems technology, also from Indiana University.

Ayres Hall

An article by Alison Buchan, an associate professor in microbiology, and graduate student Christopher Gulvik have been published in the June issue of Applied Environmental Microbiology. The article, entitled “Simultaneous Catabolism of Plant-derived Aromatic Compounds Results in Enhanced Growth for Members of the Roseobacter Lineage,” may be accessed here.

Similar to people, bacteria have preferences when it comes to the food they eat. In the study Buchan and her team conducted, marine bacteria called Roseobacters showed no preference when it comes to munching on difficult to degrade plant compounds. Buchan’s article suggests that by not being “picky eaters,” these organisms gain a competitive advantage in the environment and this helps explain their ecological success.

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Three transportation graduate students have been awarded the National Science Foundation’s East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute Awards to participate in collaborative research with international faculty and students in host countries. The awardees are Stephanie Hargrove and Zane Pannell in civil and environmental engineering and Gengen He in geography. The students will conduct research they proposed with researchers in China and Japan over two months. Visit the National Science Foundation for more information.

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During the spring semester, James Plank, electrical engineering and computer science professor, was awarded a 2012 IBM Faculty Award. The $30,000 award is highly competitive and recognizes the quality of an academic program and its importance to industry. Plank credits a collaboration with Jim Hafner, a researcher at IBM, with whom he worked on fault-tolerant storage systems for the award. To learn more, visit the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science website.

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History professor Jay Rubenstein recently received the Phi Beta Kappa Ralph Waldo Emerson Award for his book Armies of Heaven. The award is given for scholarly studies that contribute significantly to interpretations of the intellectual and cultural condition of humanity. Established in 1960, the award may recognize work in the fields of history, philosophy, or religion. For more information, visit the Phi Beta Kappa website.

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Nathan Sanders, professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, has been appointed associate editor for the ecology domain of Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene. The journal is a new, nonprofit, open access journal, founded by BioOne and supported by five US institutions including Dartmouth, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Colorado Boulder, the University of Michigan, and the University of Washington.

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Amber Woodburn, a doctoral student in civil and environmental engineering, has been selected to participate in the Eno Leadership Development Conference. She will be part of a small class of students, Eno Fellows, who are engaged in transportation policy. Only twenty students are chosen each year. Learn more about the program on the Eno Center for Transportation website.

Workers are filling in and repairing a sinkhole adjacent to Staff Lot 25 north of the Allan Jones Collegiate Aquatic Center.

Access to Staff Lot 25 and the G7 parking garage will remain open. The “T: Hill” shuttle bus will detour to UT Drive during the closure.

For more information on campus construction and road closures, visit the Cone Zone at conezone.utk.edu.

The Business Education for Talented Students (BETS) program, which runs through June 22, allows students from diverse communities to explore career and educational opportunities in the world of business. The program, which is free to students, is in its sixth year.

Students will take part in team-building activities such as a ropes course and take field trips to Alcoa, PepsiCo, PetSafe, the Knoxville mayor’s office, and accounting firm Dixon Hughes in Asheville.

While on campus, the students, from Tennessee and Georgia, will hear from faculty members and business experts. They will learn about various majors offered in UT’s College of Business Administration, including accounting, finance, marketing, economics, human resource management, public administration, enterprise management, supply chain management, and business analytics.

Students will also work on their writing and learn more about options available to fund their education.

The week will conclude with the Marketplace competition, a team-based business-simulation game that allows the students to run a company as business professionals.

More than 150 high school students from four states have participated in the program. Of the 118 students who have already completed the program, about fifty-nine students are now or will be attending UT.

The program is a great recruiting tool, said Tyvi Small, the business college’s coordinator of diversity initiatives. It also gives high school students the opportunity to see what programs the College of Business Administration has to offer and get a sneak peek at college life.

This year’s participants are rising seniors with at least a 3.76 grade point average who were nominated by counselors or community members. The thirty-two students represent twenty-four high schools and fourteen cities.

Funding for the 2013 BETS program is provided by the PepsiCo Foundation as part of its $350,000 five-year grant to the college’s diversity efforts.

The week’s events include:

• Friday, June 14

2:00 to 4:00 p.m.—Tour of Radio Systems/PetSafe, 10427 Electric Ave.

• Tuesday, June 18

Noon to 1:20 p.m.—Meeting at Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero’s office and Russ Jensen, director of the 311 call center, City County Building

• Thursday, June 20

12:30 to 1:50 p.m.—Alcoa Energy and Metals Trading Floor, 900 Gay St.

• Saturday, June 22

10:30 a.m. to noon—Marketplace competition presentations, 203 Haslam Business Building.

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CONTACTS:

Cindy Raines (865-974-4359, craines1@utk.edu)

Lola Alapo (865-974-3993, lalapo@utk.edu)

One Stop will make students’ business transactions with UT easier by bringing most enrollment, registration, financial aid, and payment services into one location staffed by counselors and equipped with the latest technology.

One Stop can be accessed by phone at 974-1111 or online at onestop.utk.edu.

Students also may stop by One Stop’s center on the ground floor of John C. Hodges Library, which will be open from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday through Friday. There, students will check in at a computer kiosk. They’ll receive help completing their transactions online or meet one-on-one with a well-trained customer representative. If there is a wait, students can grab a snack, study, or visit a library lounge until they get an e-mail telling them it’s their turn. Display screens in the area also will let students know how many people are ahead of them in the service line.

One Stop director Darren Curry

“One Stop is definitely a big idea for UT that will enhance the student experience. Through this new model, we will be able to provide the type of customer service people expect at a Top 25 university,” said Darren Curry, director of One Stop.

The offices of the registrar, bursar, and financial aid and scholarships will remain open to support the center and also perform other functions, including more extensive financial aid counseling, classroom scheduling, Banner management, graduation application processing, academic calendar development, central cashiering, and federal and state scholarships and grants processing. Faculty and staff will continue using the offices of the registrar, bursar, and financial aid and scholarships for most of their business.

To learn more about One Stop, watch this video.

Eric Lukosi, an assistant professor in nuclear engineering, received a $10,000 Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award, including $5,000 from ORAU and $5,000 in matching funds from the UT Office of Research. The award is given to thirty young faculty members at ORAU member institutions with the goal of enriching their research and professional growth, spurring new funding opportunities.

ORAU provides innovative scientific and technical solutions for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and other federal agencies to advance national priorities in science, health, education, and national security. A nonprofit corporation and federal contractor, ORAU manages the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education for the DOE.

“The Powe Award is very prestigious, and Eric’s important research is very deserving,” said Wayne Davis, dean of the College of Engineering. “This honor bodes well for his future success in sponsored research.”

Lukosi’s research focuses on the development of a long-lived, innovative nuclear battery termed a High Temperature Direct Energy Conversion (HiTDEC). The proposed battery operates by converting radioactive energy to electrical energy using a semiconducting diamond transducer.

“Current direct energy conversion nuclear batteries are very sensitive to radiation damage, thereby limiting the useful lifetime to a few days,” said Lukosi. “The proposed nuclear battery aims to surpass this limitation by providing power generation for over a year. This can be especially useful for spacecraft and sensors.”

The funds will be used for initial investigations into techniques that lessen radiation damage to the diamond transducer. The study is important to the success of the HiTDEC nuclear battery and will help define the achievable potential energy stored in the battery.

“ORAU is excited to support thirty exciting new ideas proposed by junior faculty from member institutions,” said Arlene Garrison, ORAU vice president of University Partnerships, in a statement. “This funding enables creative exploration at a critical early career stage.”

For more information on the Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award, visit ORAU’s website.

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C O N T A C T:

Whitney Heins (865-974-5460, wheins@utk.edu)

The new fleet of campus buses, which will continue using the the name “the T,” included twenty vehicles sporting the university’s school colors, a checkerboard pattern, and Smokey. The buses are equipped with USB charging stations, real-time GPS tracking to monitor their location and arrival time, and bicycle racks. Riders may track their buses on the schools Transloc site, though the GPS tracking will be integrated into the UT mobile app within the month. Route updates and service changes also will be available through the UT app once the T transit system is fully integrated.

All of the buses are accessible to passengers with disabilities.

First Transit was selected as the campus’s new transit system operator in the fall after a comprehensive campus transit survey and a competitive bid process involving various types of transit organizations. All of the buses were manufactured in California specifically for the university. Each bus runs on the highest level of biodiesel fuel, and outputs a much lower amount of soot emissions than the campus’s previous buses.

For more information on the new T transit system, visit the website.

I am excited to begin my tenure as vice chancellor for diversity at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. I do so fully understanding I am starting from a place of strength. The Council on Diversity and Interculturalism, the commissions, and many others have worked diligently to advance diversity and inclusion at UT. I look forward to working with students, faculty, staff, and senior leaders to build on the strong foundation that is already in place. This will be critical to the institution’s drive to the Top 25, as diversity and excellence are inextricably intertwined.

One of the most important lessons I have learned in many years of doing this work is that you have to put context before content. In order to get a sense of the context of UT, the state, and the region, over the next six months I plan to spend some dedicated time listening and learning—both on campus and off. What I learn will help shape the work we will do together as a campus community.

I am thrilled to be a part of the UT and Knoxville communities. I am confident we will do good and important work together. I look forward to highlighting some of that work during the 2013-14 academic year. Thoughts and suggestions can be e-mailed to me at vcdiversity@utk.edu.

Rickey Hall

Now, rocks analyzed by NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover team, including Linda Kah, associate professor of earth and planetary sciences at UT, provide solid evidence that Mars had rivers or streams. This suggests that the environment was drastically different than today’s cold and dry conditions, with the potential to support life.

A paper on the team’s findings is published in this week’s edition of Science magazine.

Since its landing last August, the Curiosity Rover has been looking for clues to whether the Martian surface has ever had environments capable of sustaining, or potentially evolving, life. Critical evidence may include hydrated minerals or water-bearing minerals, organic compounds, or other chemical ingredients related to life.

Scientists of the Mars Science Laboratory mission used images collected from the rover’s MastCam, which includes two high-resolution cameras mounted onto its mast. The cameras take full-color images and have filters that can isolate wavelengths of light that provide information about minerals present on the planet’s surface.

As the rover moved from its landing site to its current location in “Yellowknife Bay,” the cameras captured images of large rock formations composed of many rounded pebbles cemented into beds several centimeters thick. While such deposits are very common on Earth, the presence of these types of rocks on Mars has great significance for the Red Planet.

“These (rock formations) point to a past on Mars that was warmer, and wet enough to allow water to flow for many kilometers across the surface of Mars,” said Kah, who helped work the cameras.

The clasts, or pebbles within the rock formation, appear to have been rounded by erosion while carried through water, such as in a stream or river. The size and orientation of the pebbles suggest they may have been carried by one or more shallow, fast-moving streams.

Using published abrasion rates and taking into consideration reduced gravity, the scientists estimate the pebbles were moved at least a few kilometers. Analyzing the grain size distribution and similar rock formations, the scientists believe the river was less than a meter deep and the water’s average velocity was 0.2 to 0.75 meters per second.

“These rocks provide a record of past conditions at the site that contrasts with the modern Martian environment, whose atmospheric conditions make liquid water unstable,” said Kah. “Finding ancient river deposits indicates sustained liquid water flows across the landscape, and raises prospects of once habitable conditions.”

The Curiosity mission will not conclude until at least 2014. For more information, visit NASA’s website.

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CONTACT:

Whitney Heins (865-974-5460, wheins@utk.edu)

Traffic traveling south on Phillip Fulmer Way from Cumberland Avenue will need to turn right onto Peyton Manning Pass. Traffic traveling north on Phillip Fulmer Way from Lake Loudoun Boulevard will need to turn right onto Tee Martin Drive.

For more information on campus traffic, visit the Cone Zone website.

Faculty, staff, students, and visitors can follow these tips to save resources and lower energy costs:

• Take advantage of natural light
• Turn off the lights when you’re the last to leave a room
• Power down unused computers and other electronic appliances. Faculty, staff, and students can sign the campus Power Down Pledge here.
• Complete higher electric use activities outside of the peak time period
• Keep outside doors and windows closed to conserve air conditioning
• Take the stairs and limit your use of elevators

In addition, faculty and staff who operate dishwashers or laundry machines or stock refrigerators and freezers as part of their jobs should conduct this work outside of the peak use times.

Peak times for energy use are determined by the Tennessee Valley Authority and vary by season. Summer peak energy use billing, which became mandatory for TVA’s largest customers in 2011, provides the campus with an opportunity to save on energy costs by adjusting routines.

Faculty, staff, and students have been encouraged to change their on-campus energy use habits since the Switch Your Thinking initiative began in September 2008. Since then, campus electricity use per square foot has decreased by approximately 7 percent. With this improvement, the university has cut more than 68,000 megawatt-hours in electricity usage equaling a cost avoidance of $5.2 million.

The campus was honored at TVA’s Green Power Switch Leadership Awards last month by receiving the Sustainable Pioneer award for the second year in a row. The award is given to the largest purchaser of green power in TVA’s service area. UT’s green power purchase efforts are led through the Student Environmental Initiatives Committee, a body made up a students, faculty, and staff.

You can find more about UT’s sustainable efforts and tips for reducing campus energy use at switch.utk.edu.

Gramling, who has worked in similar programs at Florida State University and at South College in Knoxville, began her new job earlier this month. She will assist faculty and staff in developing and supporting online programs and courses at UT. She will facilitate communication between students seeking online instruction and programs, and will help develop and maintain a website to assist all involved. She reports to the vice provost for academic affairs.

Gramling has bachelor’s degrees in literature and history from the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. She has a doctorate in education and a master’s degree in secondary education, both from UT. During her studies at UT, she worked as a graduate assistant in the Office of Research and Information Technology’s Innovative Technology Center and as a graduate assistant in the College of Education, Health, and Human Science’s Department of Instructional Technology, Curriculum, and Evaluation.

Upon graduating from UT in 2003, she began working as a project manager in the Office of Distributed and Distance Learning at Florida State University, where she helped develop and manage online and hybrid courses. Most recently she worked as the associate director of instructional technology and distance learning at South College in Knoxville.

“I am honored to be back at UT and to serve an institution that has meant so much to me,” Gramling said. “I look forward to working with the faculty, staff, students, and administrators that make UT such a great place and to increasing the quality educational opportunities available to students through the development of innovative teaching and learning environments.”

• The G3 entrance to the Administrative Parking Garage on Lake Loudoun Boulevard will be closed beginning Tuesday, May 28, through Sunday, June 2. Please access this level of the garage from Phillip Fulmer Way during this time.
• The G5/Staff Lot 30 entrance to the Staff 30 Lot surface parking area on Lake Loudoun Boulevard will be closed Tuesday, May 28, though Sunday, June 2. Please access this parking area from Phillip Fulmer Way during this time.
• The entrance to the small section of Staff Lot 30 parking behind the McClung Museum accessed from Lake Loudoun Boulevard will be closed Monday, June 3 through Sunday, June 9. Please use other nearby Staff Lot 30 parking areas during this time.

If you have questions, please contact Parking and Transit Services at 974-6031. Thank you for your patience and cooperation as Lake Loudon Boulevard undergoes this beautification effort.

The event, which is free and open to the public, is from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. and will be held at the museum, 1327 Circle Park Drive.

The birthday celebration marks the fiftieth anniversary of the museum’s official dedication on June 1, 1963.

The celebration’s activities incorporate the museum’s permanent and temporary exhibits. They include the opportunity to use prehistoric tools, create an Egyptian Pharaoh’s headdress, play “pin the tooth on the dinosaur,” and identify birds. Prizes will be given to McClung Museum explorers who complete activities during the event.

A photo booth will allow visitors to take memorable photos with friends and family members. Free museum memberships and door prizes will be given away throughout the afternoon and refreshments will be provided courtesy of Aramark.

The McClung Museum is open 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Sundays. Admission is free, and free parking is available in front of the museum on Circle Park Drive.

For more information, visit the McClung Museum’s website.

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CONTACT:

Christina Selk (865-974-2143, cselk@utk.edu)

Catherine Shteynberg (865-974-6921, cshteynb@utk.edu)

The public can now enjoy those photos too, courtesy of the UT Libraries. The library staff has transformed them into an online digital collection. “The Panoramic Images of Elgin P. Kintner, M.D.” may be viewed at the library’s website.

The collection is a collaboration between UT Libraries and Kintner’s daughter Beccie King. Recognizing the value of her father’s images and wishing to see them recreated as her father envisioned them, King had the negatives scanned and digitally stitched to form seamless panoramas. She then donated the finished panoramas along with a large collection of her father’s stand-alone photographs to UT Libraries.

Kintner, who was the first full-time pathologist at Blount Memorial Hospital, died in May 2008 at the age of ninety.

“He saw those mountains every day on his way to and from the hospital and thought how beautiful they are,” King said. “But he realized you can’t get to know the mountains unless you get into the mountains. With that realization he started hiking. He set a goal for himself of hiking all the maintained trails in the park, and then all the unmaintained trails. He accomplished that goal and more.”

King noted that her father cherished being able to take panoramic photos of unobstructed views from the fire towers. Many of them no longer exist.

“The fire towers on Blanket Mountain, Bunker Hill, High Rocks, Rich Mountain, and Spruce Mountain — those historic structures are gone,” said Ken Wise, a UT librarian and the author of several hiking guides to the Smokies. “That makes Dr. Kintner’s panoramic views an even more treasured collection.”

Wise, along with UT librarian Anne Bridges, is co-director of UT Libraries’ Great Smoky Mountains Regional Project.

“We love these photos,” Bridges said. “As soon as Beccie showed us the images, we saw their potential. We’re so grateful to her for letting us add them to the Smokies collection.”

For fifteen years, the Great Smoky Mountains Project has been collecting and preserving books, articles, photographs, manuscripts, maps, business records, diaries, and other written and visual materials to create the definitive collection on the Smokies. Selected collections are made available online for use by scholars and researchers around the world. Those online collections now include a photographic record of the Smokies covering more than 125 years.

Click here to view the UT Libraries’ digital collections.

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CONTACT:

Martha Rudolph (865-974-4273, mrudolp2@utk.edu)

Lola Alapo (865-974-3993, lalapo@utk.edu)

Life of the Mind is UT’s common reading experience for all first-year students. The program is part of First-Year Studies 100, a required online course designed to help freshman make a successful transition to college.

This year’s Life of the Mind book selection is Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet by noted environmentalist Bill McKibben.

In addition to reading the book and submitting a creative response, students are required to participate in a small-group discussion session and attend a lecture by the author.

This year, Life of the Mind organizers are planning for 180 discussion groups. About thirty more faculty and staff members are needed to serve as leaders.

Discussion Leader training will be held from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. on August 13 and 14. Participants can attend one of the sessions.

The discussion groups will be held at 4:00 p.m. on Monday, August 19, prior to McKibben’s presentation at 5:30 p.m.

To sign up to be a discussion leader and learn more about the book, visit the Life of the Mind website.  Once you sign up, you will be sent a copy of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.

The Ocoee also was the most visited whitewater river in the United States, according to the report.

Steve Morse, an economist and associate professor in UT’s Department of Retail, Hospitality, and Tourism Management, shared the results today during a presentation at the Chattanooga Convention Center. The study was conducted in partnership with the Ocoee River Outfitters Association and America Outdoors Association.

“This study shows that tourism and visitor spending at the Ocoee River is fueling small businesses, creating jobs, worker paychecks, and taxes in rural Tennessee,” Morse said.

For the study, Morse and graduate student Eric Beckman examined the impact of visitors to the sixty-mile region surrounding the river. It includes thirty counties—fourteen in Tennessee, thirteen in Georgia, and three in North Carolina. They surveyed the spending patterns of 3,118 visitors rafting the Ocoee River between June and September 2012.

Morse and Beckman then analyzed the spending of 229,542 visitors who took rafting trips during the year. The number of users was taken from the Tennessee Department of the Environment and Conservation’s report on Ocoee River usage.

Morse’s study shows that visitors to the Ocoee:

• Supported 622 jobs
• Helped generate $14.12 million in worker paychecks
• Contributed $3.57 million in tax revenues for the river’s tri-state area

The Ocoee River, which was the site for the whitewater canoe and kayak events for the1996 Summer Olympics, is now officially the most visited whitewater river in the United States, according to study.

After the Ocoee River, the other four most visited whitewater rivers are the Arkansas River in Colorado, Pigeon River in Tennessee, Nantahala River in North Carolina, and Lehigh River in Pennsylvania.

“Tennessee’s scenic beauty and outdoor adventure are among the state’s best tourism assets,” said Tennessee Tourism Commissioner Susan Whitaker. “Having the Ocoee now officially the nation’s most popular whitewater river reinforces that Tennessee is a top-tier outdoor destination.”

The Tennessee counties surrounding the Ocoee River are Bledsoe, Blount, Bradley, Cumberland, Hamilton, Loudon, Marion, McMinn, Meigs, Monroe, Polk, Rhea, Roane, and Van Buren. The Georgia counties are Catoosa, Dade, Dawson, Fannin, Gilmer, Gordon, Lumpkin, Murray, Pickens, Towns, Union, Walker, and Whitfield. The North Carolina counties are Cherokee, Clay, and Graham.

For a copy of the study, email smorse@utk.edu.

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C O N T A C T S:

Lola Alapo (865-974-3993, lola.alapo@tennesse.edu)

Steve Morse (865-850-9319, smorse@utk.edu)

Fifteen of the top-ranked US schools of information sciences, including UT, are represented among the list of forty-six iSchools from around the world.

“Gaining the iSchool membership is external recognition of our school’s outstanding record of attracting substantial sponsored research funding, engaging students to be future researchers and leading edge professionals, as well as a having a commitment to innovative understanding of the information environment,” said SIS Director Ed Cortez.

“We hope to contribute to the mission of the iSchool movement by continuing to seek new leadership markets for our graduates in all places where information happens,” said Cortez. “As an iSchool, we will continue to look for every opportunity to interject our skills and inform all aspects of society of the pivotal role that information professionals play in research and development, scholarship, exploration, discovery, enrichment, and recreation.”

The iSchools organization was founded in 2005 to promote an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the opportunities and challenges associated with information through innovative research and teaching. iSchool members strive to lead in the information field as well as work together on shared challenges.

For more information on the UT School of Information Sciences, visit www.sis.utk.edu. For more information on iSchools, visit iSchools.org.

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CONTACT:

Donna Silvey (865-974-6727, dsilvey@utk.edu)

What does this mean for staff and faculty?

After the upgrade, staff and faculty will have two separate accounts with the same user name and password.

• Office 365 account. This account gives staff, and faculty access to Microsoft resources such as IT Academy. For students, this account is also used for their UT e-mail. OIT will continue to provide administration for this account and this password will sync with your NetID password.
• Personal Microsoft account. Staff and faculty that have used their UT e-mail address and password to access Microsoft services, such as Skydrive, will now have a separate, personal Microsoft account for accessing these services. OIT will no longer provide administration for this account and as a result, cannot reset the password for users. Initially, passwords for these accounts will be the same as your NetID password. OIT strongly recommends setting up your Microsoft personal account preferences at accounts.live.com.

Information and Support

For more information about the upgrade, see the Office 365 upgrade page.

If you have questions or need help, contact the OIT HelpDesk online or at 865-974-9900.