The third meeting of the Website Proposal Group was on January 30th at 9AM. In attendance were Lori Nidoh, Eugeniu Grigorescu, Sandy Pesavento, and Jeremy Sepinsky.
There were three items on the agenda to discuss.
- Peer/Aspirant Universities – Sandy Pesavento and Teresa Conte looked into website management of the schools on the Peer/Aspirant list for The University of Scranton. Reaching out to each school on the list, they received only one response, which was from Loyola University Maryland. It seems that they have a similar system to what is in place here: webmaster distributed among different departments. We are still hoping to hear back from a number of other schools.
- Schools Using our CMS – Lori Nidoh investigated the webpage management of other schools who currently use the same CMS software that we have implemented on campus. This resulted in two direct responses. The first was from the University of Dayton who seem to have a much more centralized website management/update procedure. They have 6 webmasters, appointed by each of their 6 Deans, who manage the web content in their area. These webmasters each have the ability to appoint staff and/or faculty members who can make edits — but not publish — content on the front-facing PR sites for the university (such as main departmental webpages). The University of Dayton is about twice the size of Scranton, having an equivalent full-time enrollment of about 10,000 students.The second response came from Jackson State who claimed to have many of the same problems that we do. They do have a central webmaster, but the publishing model is more distributed, and they also have problems determining and designating who is responsible for content management.
- Size of the University Web Presence – Thanks to Joe Cassabona from Information Resources, Jeremy Sepinsky reported the approximate size of the departmental webpages on campus. They range from as few as 4 to over 100. Thus, it is difficult to come up with a specific “size” that represents most departments, but an eyeball-average says that most departments have about 20 separate webpages with content that needs to be managed. With over 20 separate departments at the university of Scranton, there is quite a bit of content to manage.Additionally, it was pointed out that the departmental websites don’t really have a uniform appearance. While they are all in the CMS, the navigation bar and the location of certain useful pieces of information (faculty websites, contact info, etc.) is not necessarily in the same place. This can cause confusion for prospective faculty and students. Thus, it may be necessary for a proposed hire to first create a uniform theme and content organization before being fully immersed in routine updates.
After this, we discussed some of the requirements that a proposed webmaster position would need. It seems the role we are asking to be filled is twofold: Webpage Designer and Content Manager. The Webpage designer portion is responsible for designing the general look of the sites, as well as collaborating with the Marketing and Communication Division to ensure proper marketability of the website. The Content Manager portion is responsible for contacting and collaborating with individual faculty members and departments, determine what should be displayed, and how it should be presented. Thus, it appears that this would need to not be an entry-level hire.
At our next meeting, we intend to start writing the formal proposal.
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