EAST LANSING, Mich. — Ask anyone who has walked on the 5,200-acre swath of land on which Michigan State University campus sits; it is huge by any measure. Now picture a mesh of roadways that crisscross through its 660 buildings and other structures, and the challenge of navigating through campus becomes even more challenging, especially for a newcomer.

But what if you had the choice of logging on to the MSU Web site to get an easy way of finding your way around campus without the hassles?

Gugulethu Mabuza, an electrical engineering senior from Zimbabwe, found an answer using the Google Maps application program interface, or API. With this application, a programmer can embed Google Maps in a Web page with JavaScript to enhance user-friendliness.

“As part of my job, I usually go to different academic and office buildings to do work there,” said Mabuza, who also is a network assistant at MSU’s Academic Computing and Network Services. “At first, this site was for my personal use. It was a mammoth task to add all the information and building locations, but thereafter it made my task of getting around campus a lot easier.”

Using the official MSU map, his goal was to turn this static map into something interactive and fun. He realized that his new found discovery could have a universal application, so last semester he decided to host it at http://www.spartylive.com. He further improved the mapping engine and added pictures and links to the different Web sites on campus.

“Once, I was walking on campus and a group of people stopped me to ask for directions,” he said. “I had my BlackBerry with me and I took them to spartylive.com. They loved the map and immediately added it to their bookmarks and spent the rest of the day using it as a reference to move from building to building.”

To use the map page on spartylive.com, the user will find that it is split in half – one side lists all the buildings on campus; the other lists all the roads, including the bus routes. So if you are going from Cherry Lane apartments to the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, you click on that choice. A push-pin icon will pop up on the map where that building is located. If you click on the icon, you'll get written directions to the building. In addition to finding the location, the side panel also could display news and planned events for the building, and other information.

The project is metamorphosing into something bigger.

“After creating spartylive.com, I thought it would be fun to use the same technology to create a map for the international students,” he said. “For instance, on the African Students Union page, http://www.msu.edu/user/asu/, you can search as you would on spartylive.com. I think it will encourage a close knit community as Africans and Africanists identify with each other and meet new people.

“For the larger MSU community, it also will be a way to market their study abroad programs in Africa. Students on study abroad can use this map to get firsthand information about the cities and institutions they are going to visit.”

Meanwhile, the Office of International Students and Scholars has become interested. Mabuza is going to feature information such as up-to-date ratio of student population from each country and some graphs and pie charts to show the trends over the years.

“I am excited to do this, and this may be the first step to building a self-sustaining type project that will be automatically updated even long after I have graduated,” he said.

The possibilities of using this technology are endless. According to Mabuza, a real estate company has discovered his pet project and is considering using this innovation to market its business.

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Michigan State University has been advancing knowledge and transforming lives through innovative teaching, research and outreach for 150 years. MSU is known internationally as a major public university with global reach and extraordinary impact. Its 14 degree-granting colleges attract scholars worldwide who are interested in combining education with practical problem solving.