Wondering what’s happening tonight, tomorrow, this weekend or next month at MTSU?

The university now has a one-stop website for the campus community — and the rest of the world — to learn about upcoming activities at MTSU: www.mtsu.edu/calendar.

Easily searchable and with a website that’s easy to remember and bookmark, the final version of the MTSU University Master Calendar has been in the works for several months. A special Master Calendar Committee studied it from almost every angle to make it easy to read, search and use.

“Our university has been in need of a universitywide ‘master calendar’ for a long time, and we are excited about its release. This project has been a campuswide group effort,” said Quintina Burton, chairwoman of the special calendar committee and a longtime member of MTSU’s Event Coordination staff.

“This calendar has something for everyone! The overall goal was to create a calendar for the surrounding Murfreesboro community as well as a useful calendar for our MTSU campus community.”

The calendar includes each event that’s scheduled in or at an MTSU facility and has contact information as well as more details via a hotlink. Users can subscribe to their selected calendar to get weekly updates via email, RSS or iCal feeds.

Visitors to www.mtsu.edu/calendar will automatically see the top “featured events” for the coming two months when they first arrive at the site.

They can then customize a search to find upcoming student activities, athletics or arts events, special conferences or lectures, testing and important student dates and deadlines, just to name a few.

Users also can get the full impact of the MTSU events calendar by selecting “all” to see each day’s events in color-coded calendars.

The new calendar is powered by the popular 25Live event scheduling and publishing software. 25Live is a product of CollegeNet Inc., a Portland, Ore.-based company that provides web-based on-demand technology used by colleges, universities and nonprofits nationwide.

Events that receive additional publicity from the MTSU Office of News and Media Relations will include a link to the news articles, photos, etc., at their new 25Live calendar listing too, organizers said.

MTSU students who helped evaluate and tweak the calendar before the launch had good things to say about it.

“This calendar will be a great tool for anyone looking for something to do on campus,” said mass communication major Robert Rittling.

“I like being able to add events to my calendar. I think that will be a big hit with the students,” added Jason Bandy, a senior majoring in computer science.

Special campus events also will be listed on the main MTSU.edu home page to catch users’ eyes, officials said.

The university’s WebViewer online calendar will continue to function, Burton said, but it now will mostly be used to check room availability.

MTSU’s facility booking procedures and policies to include events on the new calendar will remain the same, and the list of authorized facility-scheduling personnel has not changed. The website for that information is www.mtsu.edu/eventcoordination/

Each scheduler will be asking for plenty of details from event organizers to ensure thorough information for each calendar item, Burton said.

Suggestions and input are welcome as users get accustomed to the new calendar, officials said. Comments can be sent to evtcoord@mtsu.edu.

— Gina E. Fann (Gina.Fann@mtsu.edu)