On March 16, the Office of Information and Technology (OIT) introduced Hoof Prints, a new printing solution made in partnership with Wēpa to make printing on campus easier and more sustainable. The new service allows for printing from personal devices, cloud integration and the ability to monitor the status and location of printing stations.

These new printing stations are currently located at in-person computer labs on campus in the Munday Library, Trustee Hall, Johnson Hall and the Ragsdale Center. The ability to monitor these printers will eliminate the need to walk across campus only to find that they are out of service.

“[The] cloud printing system is principally maintained by Wēpa’s dedicated support team, which means any potential downtime is kept to a minimum,” IT communications coordinator Yasmeen Yahya said. “In addition, Wēpa provides part replacements within the next business day if there are any hardware issues.” 

There are multiple ways to use the new Hoof Prints stations. The recommended way is to use the Wēpa Print app, which can be downloaded on both Android and iOS. Once the app is downloaded, files can be added to it from the device or cloud storage. After that, simply tapping the phone to the printing station will release the documents. A similar software can also be downloaded on a laptop or computer.

Those who do not wish to download anything have other options available, including the Wēpa web portal, a USB drive, email to print or the cloud storage function on the printing kiosk itself.

“Wēpa has advanced, modern reporting capabilities that our old system does not, which will allow maintenance for these printers to be mainly proactive instead of reactive,” Yahya said.

Students will be offered a balance of $10 each semester in order to use the service. This is equivalent to 125 monochrome pages though printing in color will be more expensive. Any unused balance in the fall will roll over to the spring, but the balance will reset entirely after the spring semester. Students may print with their own money once their balance has expired.

“OIT recognizes that the cost associated with this new service may impede those who need to print often,” Yahya said. “That is why we encourage students who have questions or concerns about their Hoof Prints credit to contact OIT at support.stedwards.edu.”

While Hoof Prints is aimed at making printing on campus more convenient, it is also designed to be more sustainable. Wēpa is currently partnered with PrintReleaf, an organization that automatically reforests the amount of trees harvested to produce the printing paper. In addition, the ability to monitor the print queue prevents any excessive printing.