Web and Print Projects Win SIGUCCS Awards

UO student Zachary Yamada’s online video “Protecting Yourself Online” won an Award of Excellence in the Electronic How-to Guides category at the 2011 SIGUCCS Communications Awards in November.

Yamada, a junior in Computer and Information Science, works for the Information Services Help Desk.

Protecting yourself and your identity is important, said Yamada. “As the Internet grows in usage and its penetration into our lives increases, the unfortunate fact is that more and more people can use it to take advantage of others. The Internet is now at Zachary Yamadaa point where people can be easily taken advantage of, and sometimes the built-in safeguards aren’t enough.”

That applies to college students, too, Yamada said. “Parents teach their children they shouldn’t talk to strangers, but because of the timing of the development of the Internet, lots of people [college age] and older don’t have a voice in their heads telling them not to click on a stranger’s link.”

See Yamada’s video at goo.gl/58T3g (it.uoregon.edu/protect-yourself-online).

Three other projects—two digital and one print—also won SIGUCCS Communications Awards.

The university’s IT website, it.uoregon.edu, won an Award of Excellence. That website launched in November, 2010, and has served up more than a half million web page views in the year since.

The Software Center, a new feature of the IT website, won Best of Category for Software Distribution—Electronic Media. Software Center offers quick and easy downloads of software licensed for use at the UO. Titles available on campus include Mathematica, SPSS, and McAfee VirusScan. Visit it.uoregon.edu/software/list.

The spring 2010 edition of IT Connections, Information Services’ semi-annual print magazine, won Best of Category for Printed Computing Newsletter. Pick up a copy of IT Connections in the EMU near the Fir Room or read online at itconnections.uoregon.edu.

Five UO students were involved in producing the award-winning work: Brian Costlow, Holly Schnackenberg, Ray Tsunoda, Zachary Yamada, and graduate student  Nathan Gilles. Staff who contributed to the projects are Mary Bradley, Patrick Chinn, Helen Chu, Kelsey Davis, Don Harris, Jesse Sedwick, and Derek Wormdahl.

The SIGUCCS Communications awards, which have been awarded annually since 1996, recognize outstanding websites, publications and promotional materials produced by university and college computing centers. For a complete list of winners, see www.siguccs.org/Conference/Fall2011/awardwinners.html.

SIGUCCS, the Special Interest Group on University and College Computing Services, is an association of professionals who support and manage technology services in higher education. It was founded in 1963.