UC Santa Cruz has 'updated' its free iPhone app to enable smartphone users to access the campus's online directory and check on the availability of library holdings. The app also includes redesigned emergency features.
In addition to the development of the version 2 iPhone app, the two alumni who have worked with the campus on its mobile application have also developed an Android version of the UC Santa Cruz app.
Both the iPhone and Android versions of the campus app also provide students and others with with regularly updated campus news, events listings, videos, photos, events, and Google maps functionality.
The iPhone app — featuring the smiling, bespectacled Sammy the Slug mascot — first went live in September 2010, thanks to a collaborative effort involving former UCSC students Kushyar Kasraie and Jamieson Johnson, as well as staff from the campus's University Relations and Information Technology Services divisions.
Kasraie and Johnson — whose iCampus company has helped develop similar apps at Brandeis University, San Diego State University, Yale University, and Lewis University — said the UCSC app is the perfect way for busy, multi-tasking students to keep up with life at UC Santa Cruz. "We could have really used this app on our phones when we were students on campus," Kasraie says. Adds Johnson: "Now that we are UCSC graduates, it is still very useful, enabling us to keep up with campus news and events. But, really, it's available for faculty and staff, parents of current students, campus visitors, and anyone else to download for free."
Both Kasraie and Johnson graduated from UCSC with bachelor's degrees in Business Management Economics: Kushyar (College Nine) in '09; Johnson (Cowell), earlier in 2012.
Kasraie said the idea of an iPhone app occurred to him when he was still at UCSC.
You can update the app on the iPhone by going to the "App Store" icon and selecting the UCSC app on the "Update" list. To download either the iPhone or Android versions of the UCSC app, go to: http://www.ucsc.edu/mobile/
