Tag Archives: Walwood Hall

Proof of Life

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Here is some email back and forth between me and a fellow at Google Apps who doesn’t believe that I’m who I say I am. Oh how to prove WMU.

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Email From Google:
On Jan 13, 2011, at 6:26 PM, The Google Team wrote:

Hello Andy,

Thanks for your message.

Before we can continue processing your application for an Apps for
Education Upgrade, please clarify the purpose of the specific domain you
have requested for upgrade.

In addition, can you please provide the following information:

What are the ages of the students you teach?
Do you offer degrees to students who complete the program?
Have you received accreditation from an accepted accrediting body?

Please reply to this email with your responses so we may continue to
process your request. If you are a certified 501(c)(3) non-profit
organization please send us your EIN, as you may qualify for an upgrade to
Education Edition for non-profits.

If you do not feel you meet these requirements, we invite you to continue
to manage your account with our free Google Apps, which offers many of the
same features and services.

Sincerely,

Suchit
The Google Apps Team

My Response:

Hello,

We teach students from 18 to in their 80’s… This might help:

Western Michigan University (WMU) is a public universityestablished in 1903 by Dwight B. Waldo. When the school first opened, it was known as the Western State Normal School, but was renamed Western State Teachers College in 1927 and Western Michigan College of Education in 1941. On February 26, 1957 Governor G. Mennen Williams signed into law a bill making Western Michigan College the state’s fourth public university. In its annual ranking of the nation’s 4,000 colleges and universities, U.S. News & World Report consistently lists WMU as one of the nation’s top 100 public universities. (Hooray Wikipedia!)

We offer many degrees, Everything from Bachelors all the way up to PhD’s. We’ve got about 117,000 alumni who we’ve graced with degrees. We’ve got 278,000 living constituents… I’m just saying.

And once again…

Western Michigan University is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, 30 North LaSalle Street, Suite 2400, Chicago, Illinois 60602-2504; Web site www.ncahigherlearningcommission.org.

Feel free to give me a call, 269-387-8719 and we can discuss Western Michigan University in detail. I’m the system administrator for WMU Development and Alumni Relations, my office is in Walwood Hall room 133E. I’m sure we could likely also find a few of our graduates who WORK AT GOOGLE and have degrees from our COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING. Oye!

Thanks for the laughs, I hope some of this works for you guys…

Andy McHugh
269-216-4597

Uncle Henry! It’s a Twister!

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Just endured a Tornado Warning here at work. Everyone proceeded in a calm and orderly fashion into the basement of Walwood Hall and all in all we did quite well. The only thing I could really complain about was the stairs to access the area, for older folk with bad knees it’s definitely takes some time.

Once we were down in the basement technology shined. Everyone gathered around me and my iPad. I also had water, a fire extinguisher, and my Ready.gov emergency preparedness kit in a man-sized duffle bag. Several things I noticed were a lack of timely (where minutes count) updates from the National Weather Service, The Weather Channel app being sluggish to load and not having up-to-date data, again, in a timely fashion. I could access all the network resources I needed to, which was comforting. I have to find some source on Twitter that has as-close-to-realtime weather data as possible. For the entire event the only procedural problem was doubt surrounding the all-clear signal. Custodial Services delivered a premature all-clear that was in contradiction to the warning provided by the NWS. Which to follow? Who has authority? WMU really needs a centralized “GO” and “SAFE” system, what we have with the NWS is okay, but the confusion and doubt surrounding the “SAFE” declaration is rather upsetting.

Perhaps there is a technological solution, I’ll have to investigate. If anyone has any experiences, please feel free to comment and share them here. TIA!