Academic Departments
Get a Fresh Online Look
These days, when a high school student begins her search
for colleges, she typically begins with an Internet search. She accesses the main
Web page of colleges she’s interested in then works her way to departmental Web sites
of her possible majors.
“Updated departmental Web pages are critical to the
admission office,” said Karen Kristof, senior associate director for administrative
marketing in admission. “Not only do prospective students peruse college Web sites
frequently, they are often looking for specific information about a particular academic
program.”
To accommodate her search through its layers of Web
pages, Smith is redesigning many online departmental sites. Recent “launches” include
English, Afro-American studies and sociology. New sites for history and art are near
completion.
“We want to maintain a consistent design of our Web
pages,” said Annie Cahill (right), Web development specialist in college relations, who is
re-creating the sites, “so that when a prospective student browses the Smith College
site, all the pages will have a unified look and feel, and she won’t feel like she’s
navigated off the college’s site.”
Smith College’s Web site consists of thousands of individual
pages. Hundreds of those pages are under the auspices of the college’s academic departments
and programs. The site is designed as a viewing brochure for prospective students.
“It’s important to keep a consistent branding,” said
Cahill. “And, as young people are becoming more Web savvy, it’s also important to
stay on top of new trends.”
Cahill’s re-created Web sites emphasize a fresh look,
as well as flexibility for simple updating. Importantly, she is designing departmental
sites to accommodate updates by various college personnel. “Our new design is more
user-friendly,” she said, “and because we’ve designed it, we are always available
to help out or make changes for departments.”
Many department sites were created by students, who
have since left Smith, or designers outside the college who charge fees to make changes,
she noted. “These sites have been made with their own special formula of arbitrariness
and crazy sauce, and they’ve lost the recipe,” Cahill half-joked. “We are a free
service and are always around to help.”
Cahill works closely with faculty representatives to
retain departmental preferences and objectives.
“Our process has been to meet with departments to discuss
what their objectives are,” said Cahill. “When they’ve seen what we can do, they
are very pleased with the results.”
In particular, explained Cahill, the sites she is redesigning
are outfitted with updated features such as a carousel of rotating images on the
front page and potential interfaces to popular online resources such as Facebook
and Twitter.
As Kristof explained, when it comes to attracting the
strongest applicants in the country, a college’s Web presence can make the difference.
“We know that many of our applicants rely heavily on
Web sites to figure out what distinguishes Smith from other colleges they’re considering,” she
said. |
