The post-launch development projects were with the Office of Admissions, the Graduate School, Orientation Programs, the Division of Educational Outreach, the Office of Development, the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines and the Mountain Heritage Center. The Office of Web Services continues to work with these offices, with a focus on improving the admissions process for undergraduate, graduate and distance education students.

In February, Provost Kyle R. Carter established the next set of priorities for site redesign, with academic programs and areas affecting admissions and recruitment taking precedence. These redesigns--either complete or in progress--are as follows: college-level pages; art and design department; communication, theatre and dance department; entrepreneurship program; Fine and Performing Arts Center; forensic anthropology program; Kimmel School; musical theatre program; nursing department; and the Teacher Education Program.

With funding from the Office of the Provost, five faculty writers from the English department—Mary Adams, Jacob Babb, Leah Hampton, Eric Hendrix and Murat Yazan—were drafted to work on content for the priority redesigns during the spring semester. In addition, Hunter Library Webmaster Melissa Young has joined the Web services team—Director Newt Smith, Web Developer Jed Tate and Web Editor Amy P. Walker—on a temporary, part-time basis.

With these staffing resources in place, the Web services team is working to bring all the academic department sites into the new content management system by fall while continuing to enhance sites for student recruiting. In July, the team also will make significant changes to the site as required by the university’s college redesign.

The Office of Web Services has written its own user-friendly guidelines and “how to” manual for WCU’s Web managers as they are brought into RedDot after their sites are redesigned and launched. Representatives from admissions, the Graduate School and educational outreach already have been trained and are using RedDot to maintain their pages.

In addition to the Web site redesign project, Web services staff members have been collaborating with the Division of Academic Affairs and the Office of Institutional Research and Planning on WCU’s new, integrated events calendar. The calendar was recently launched to the campus community and is available at http://r25web.wcu.edu/wv3/.

To learn more about the WCU Web site redesign project and content management system, visit http://www.wcu.edu/it/webredesign/ or contact Newton Smith, director of Web services, at 828-227-2411 or smithn@email.wcu.edu .