At this year’s FallFest, in the moments after Third Eye Blind left the stage and before Akon took it, junior engineering major Jared Crawford overheard the following conversation:

“I don’t know where Brooks Hall is,” a student called to his friend.

The friend reached into his pocket and fished out the answer. “Just let me look at my iPhone app,” he replied.

“That,” said Crawford, grinning at the memory “was really cool.”

Cool because Crawford created that student-friendly application, iWVU, this summer, furiously configuring code in the evenings after his research assistantship, where he fabricated waveguide nanostructures for optical characterization of photonic crystals (and received a prestigious $10,000 scholarship in the process).

Really.

Crawford’s iPhone app is part of a recently rolled out suite of services that allows students, faculty, staff and alumni to have complete mobile access to WVU.

It’s no surprise Crawford is at the center of the new technology. He is, after all, an amazingly intelligent guy. He created iWVU in his spare time – an application that, Vice President of University Relations Chris Martin says, would be a remarkable feat for experienced, paid professionals. And he created a previous application so complex and esoteric that the average person wouldn’t even know how to say it, let alone use it.

It’s called a complex matrix inverter. Only electrical engineers who don’t have an advanced calculator handy would ever need it.

“It was for a very, very targeted audience,” Crawford said. “Only 20 people downloaded it.”

So when more than 200 people downloaded iWVU in the first two days it was available, Crawford was plenty pleased. The app allows users to, among other things, browse an interactive campus map, stream the U92 radio station, link to Bill Stewart’s Twitter feed and – of upmost importance to Crawford and his friends – find updated dining hall menus.

“It was sort of my way of giving back to the community,” Crawford said.

“Jared has created something that really matters to our students, something that makes their daily lives easier, especially those who are new to Morgantown,” said Tricia Petty, assistant vice president for integrated marketing operations. “This is going to be a great partnership, for Jared and for the University.”

In August, around the time Crawford was signing a contract with the University, making his iPhone app the official app of WVU, Web Services professional technologist Dave Olsen launched a complementary piece of technology for campus, the WVU Mobile Web site. The site – which allows users to search the WVU directory, access an interactive campus map, browse a campus events calendar and link to WVU’s You Tube channel, among other things – is accessible from all Web-enabled mobile phones at http://m.wvu.edu.

Together, the application and mobile Web site offer users what Olsen calls, “anytime, anywhere access to WVU.”

Anywhere isn’t an exaggeration. Crawford has tracked iWVU downloads to Canada, France, Russia, Japan and even Australia where, conceivably, someone could be using his application to stream U92 right now.

“This is really a testament to the University that we have people constantly working on new technology and social media to keep all of our students engaged and connected,” Martin said.

And Crawford and Olsen are still working. They met recently to discuss how they can make their innovations even more innovative. Neither one of them is completely satisfied with what he’s created. Olsen has dreams of providing students with step-by-step directions around campus. Crawford wants students to be able to download directory entries straight into their address books.

“It’s a big project,” Crawford said. “It’s much larger than one person. I can’t do it all as a student.”

Especially when he’s got more creations locked in his head, fighting for escape, maybe even another iPhone app.

“I don’t know,” Crawford said with a grin. “It’s not going to be a career path.”

-WVU-

aj/08/31/09

Contact: News and Information Services
304-293-6997

What would you like to see?:

Do you have suggestions about additional features for the new WVU Mobile Web site and iPhone application?