On May 10, the University’s Vice President for External Affairs Gerry Zaboski and the Vice President for Planning and CIO Jerry DeSanto announced plans for a redesign on the University’s website (quoted below).
This website redesign is a much needed update to the University’s public appearance, and should have minimal impact on current faculty. Essentially, the primary effect will be a change to the CMS theme that is used to display content on the website. While there may be small updates needed to the code on individual faculty and departmental sites, there should not be a need for large-scale recreation of the current content.
This is also of interest to TAG because of the progress on the proposal for the creation of a timeline and Web Content Specialist for the faculty (see: Relevant posts; Current version of the proposal). This website redesign was brought up at the Senate meeting where we presented the this proposal to the Senate. The Provost and Vice-President for Academic Affairs, Hal Baille, said that the proposed position would be entirely compatible with the redesign, largely because the position deals primarily with departmental websites, and the redesign deals primarily with admissions and the PR pages. While the redesign will change the look of all the departmental pages, it won’t change any of the content. Currently, the faculty and staff responsible for the website will need to update the site to comply with the new redesign. The position that is proposed by TAG would actually be able valuable at a time like this, since that person could ensure compatibility. So we don’t expect this redesign to have any negative impact on the proposed position or on the details of the proposal. In fact, if the position described in the “ideal implementation” were currently in place, we would expect that they would play a heavy role in the redesign to ensure that it fully allows faculty to display and present their work in the best way possible.
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Dear Members of the Faculty and Staff,
More than a year ago, Marketing Communications and Information Technology Development and Applications began a collaborative project to enable the templates that drive most pages on our website to adapt dynamically to various ways of viewing content. While we have maintained a mobile website for some time, we set out to implement a responsive approach that allows the layout of webpages to adapt to meet the screen resolution of users. This approach of designing once for all devices (i.e. desktops, large screens, tablets and mobile phones) is a more efficient way to maintain and “future-proof” websites.
More recently, the Admissions team joined the effort as we undertook a substantial redesign of our University homepage and top section pages (e.g. academics, student life, alumni) and began to develop a microsite to serve undergraduate admissions. This project is part of a periodic update of all of our admissions recruiting materials. The Committee on University Image and Promotion has guided the design and development of both projects. High school students and families have also offered input into the process.
The new designs will provide a fresher look that incorporates larger images and a wider width to the site when viewed on a desktop computer. Colors, fonts and graphics used on the site will also be refreshed. The new Undergraduate Admissions microsite will contain information and videos on topics of concern to prospective college students, parents and guidance counselors. The site retains links to the main site for more detailed information.
Faculty and staff can get a sneak peek at our new, responsive design when representatives from the Marketing Communications and Information Technology Development and Application departments present at the May IT Forum on Tuesday, May 21, at 11:30 a.m. in Brennan 509. At the forum, staff will explain steps that departments will need to take to update website images to larger sizes and give tips on best practices for optimizing web content for responsive sites.
Work on these important improvements should be done early this summer. We expect things to go smoothly but ask for your patience and cooperation should unforeseen issues arise.
Sincerely,
Jerry DeSanto, Ed.D.,
Vice President for Planning and CIOGerry Zaboski
Vice President for External Affairs
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