Heigh ho the derry-o. For all those home schooling or entertaining children and grandchildren with nursery rhymes at this time, familiar terrain can be a comfort. While we may not be out and about, we may still long to traverse our beautiful UTC campus. With that in mind, let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time, a gentleman named George, met with his friend, Dr. Angle, and they wanted a way for visitors, friends, students, parents, and everyone they knew to be able to find their way around the campus. They knew their way around, but they know others don’t.

George asked his friend, Chèrie, to see if there was a better way to help visitors to UTC experience the campus virtually. Whether the visitor would physically come to campus or just want to look around, an ‘interactive’ map could be just the thing.

Chèrie set about meeting with people called ‘vendors’ and invited those vendors to campus late last fall. Several of Chèrie’s friends attended the meetings and made suggestions on what an interactive map could do for them. Chèrie and friend, Chris Gilligan, also talked to friends in Knoxville to find out if they were happy with their vendor choice.

In January, everyone agreed that one of the vendors would do a fine job helping map our campus and the ground was laid to buy their software and services.

In early March, a team came together representing Facilities, Safety, Academic Affairs, Information Technology, Communications and Marketing, Undergraduate Admissions, Auxiliary Services and the SimCenter to plan and plot the path to this new interactive map.

Fast forward to Thursday, April 23, the whole gang gathered virtually for the first training session on how to build and maintain our new maps created by the vendor, Concept3d. As a result of the training, the Interactive Map implementation team has homework to complete, just like our children and grandchildren. We will be identifying buildings, and streets, and trees, and fields, and parking and all manner of lovely places on our campus.

We’ll also make sure we think about accessibility so all visitors feel welcomed. Eventually, hopefully by the end of July, we will have a map with all our special places identified and where the Mocs can roam from dorms to the University Center to classrooms far and wide without ever leaving home. Visitors will learn about our buildings and how to find us when they actually can come to visit our campus.

Now where are the directions to the yellow brick road? The End.