Apply
Global Microsoft Outage

As of late Thursday evening, a widespread Microsoft outage continues to affect Outlook and other Microsoft services on campus and across the nation. Earlier this evening, Microsoft revised its list of features and services impacted by this outage, stating that it is affecting ones that interact with email services. Microsoft Outlook, SharePoint, Teams, Copilot AI, and 365 are all continuing to have various issues. Microsoft has not provided a specific estimate for when the global outage will be completely resolved, though a portion of affected servers and services have begun a gradual recovery. The next update will be posted on Friday morning.

International Media Scholar Visits Campus

November 11, 2026
Submitted By: Sundeep R. Muppidi

Dr. Shashidhar Nanjundaiah, founding dean and professor of the School of Digital Media and Communication at Mahindra University in India, will be visiting the University of Hartford from Nov. 10–13. While on campus, he will speak with students in several Digital Media and Journalism classes about media literacy, drawing on both his international newsroom experience and his scholarly research.

Dr. Nanjundaiah is a media scholar, institution builder, and a growing voice in critical technology literacy and cognitive pedagogy. At Mahindra University, he has launched programs at all levels, including a distinctive computational media program. His work explores where media technologies, algorithmic structures, and human learning meet, both in communities and in the classroom.

He is the author of the monograph News Aesthetics and Myth: The Making of Media Illiteracy in India (Routledge, 2025) and the chapter "What You See Is What You Get: Invisibility, Spectacle, and Media Literacy in the Age of Digital Media" (Springer, 2024). He and Dr. Sundeep R. Muppidi, professor of Digital Media and Journalism in the School of Communication, are co-editing a book, Human and Digital Mutualism: Code, Culture and Communication, which has received tentative approval from Springer.

An award-winning public speaker, Dr. Nanjundaiah brings more than a decade of senior-level international journalism experience to his academic work. He draws on that background and his research to challenge conventional thinking about digital consumption, public policy, and systemic media illiteracy — questions at the heart of how today's journalism and digital media students will practice their craft.

Class visits

  • Tuesday, Nov. 10: CMM 250W Fundamentals of Journalism (Dr. Deepa Fadnis) and CMM 210P: Media Literacy (Dr. Sundeep R. Muppidi)
  • Thursday, Nov. 12: CMM 210P: Media Literacy (Dr. Jack Banks)

Dr. Nanjundaiah earned his PhD in Mass Communication from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, a master's degree in Corporate and Professional Communication from Radford University, a master's degree in English Literature, and a bachelor’s degree in Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics from the University of Mysore, India.