Austin, TX – On May 1, 2002, Austin Community College will introduce its new Internet domain name – austincc.edu. In the past, most community colleges were forced to use the “cc.state.us” designation. Last year, Educause, a non-profit educational group, took over management of the .edu domain. One of their first goals was to give all community colleges the option of obtaining the .edu designation.

“More importantly, the new domain name gives us the same .edu status that universities and four-year colleges have had for years,” said Ed Osborn, marketing and public information executive. For a number of years the Department of Commerce restricted use of the .edu top level domain name to four-year institutions.

“This move to the .edu designation has many positive implications,” said Osborn. “It will make it easier for our students and other ACC website visitors to remember and use our domain name in e-mail and website addresses. It associates ACC with other members of the higher education community and places us on even footing in search engines, educational indexes, and other web-based search functions. And it gives us an opportunity to focus local attention on our website as we continue to add functionality and usefulness to our web presence.”

ACC website visitors won’t have to do anything differently to use the new domain name. The college has built in an 18-month transition during which time web links, e-mail readers, publications and various other applications that currently have the

“austin.cc.tx.us” designation will be updated.

“Our new domain name is just one of several exciting developments that I believe mark major improvements to Austin Community College’s web site,” said ACC President Richard Fonté.” On May 1, we also will publicly launch our new home page and website design. The new design is a major improvement from our previous site design.”

The College’s new home page and website design features second tier menus, and “mouse-overs” to allow for direct, one-click access to 66 different links and submenus. The new design also features improved utilities, page management features (i.e. text enlargement), and a common design template that will be available for ACC departments to use on their own web pages.

Over the next few months, ACC will also begin to implement additional online services for students. Online registration will be piloted for the Fall 2002 semester. Eventually students will be able to access their account, make payments, search for class availability and register, and access their grades – all online.