AUSTIN, Texas—Gift baskets for student birthdays, “Health Nut” snacks to help students stay healthy while studying and a “Family Learning Events Toolkit” are among a growing list of items offered by departments at The University of Texas at Austin participating in a new online shopping center called TXShop.
Two campus departments — the Division of Housing and Food Service and the Charles A. Dana Center — already have “stores” on TXShop showing their goods and services, and at least four other departments are developing online stores for the TXShop Web site.
Departments listed as “coming soon” with their own stores include the University of Texas Press, Texas Memorial Museum, Bureau of Economic Geology and Graduate School of Business. Each online store is customized by the departments to give a distinctive appearance to the merchandise they offer.
The TXShop center is operated by the university’s Informational Technology Services-Enterprise Information Services and is part of the secure administrative network that allows customers to make credit card payments that go through the centralized receivables accounting function at the university. To ensure the integrity of this process, TXShop customers must have a valid electronic identification (UT EID) to buy items from online stores. The TXShop site provides an application form for customers to apply for and immediately receive their personal UT EID as they shop.
“The goal of TXShop is to support the departments of the university in providing access to their products and services,” said Sheila Ochner, director of Enterprise Information Services. “Savings on printing and postage for catalogs justified the investment made, while improving market awareness, flexibility of portfolio and currency of information.”
The university’s Division of Housing and Food Service began using TXShop in April to create an electronic gift shop that offers gift baskets, balloons and Bevo Bucks to students living in campus student housing.
The Charles A. Dana Center site features products and services for K-12 educators. Its Web catalog provides access to all of the center’s available products and services, including classroom resources, research reports and professional development institutes. Many products are available for purchase and others are available for free on the Web.
TXShop provides departments with many of the same features they would expect from commercial shopping cart applications. Departments can specify member discounts, seasonal sales, shipping rates and special product information.
For more information contact: TXShop Team, 512-232-5584; or Robert D. Meckel, Office of Public Affairs, 512-475-7847.
