Pre-Semester Update

Improving the Application and Inquiry Experience

The Admissions office has been working on a new software product that streamlines the way the University serves prospective students.  The product changes the way students inquire and apply via the website, and the implementation required substantial changes to the website, and some design work on pages where students can apply, inquire and register for events.  Now prospective students can check their application status and documentation online, register for events, and receive e-mail updates from Admissions.

Enhancing the Quality and Quantity of Information About Our Faculty

There has been much progress on enhancing the information available about our faculty.  This information will help inform prospective parents and students about the outstanding professors here, and hopefully inform their decision process when thinking about UB.

We continue building out faculty information pages throughout the website and thank those already involved in the process.  If you are a full-time faculty member and have yet to submit your profile, you can do so here.

Academic Web Review Meetings

Many of the updates that have been suggested over the course of full-day meetings with Academic schools/institutes have been implemented, and we are now looking to take suggestions for the fall semester.  In the Deans’ Council meeting last spring, it was agreed that regular meetings to discuss the website should become part of the institutional schedule.  Moving forward, the Web Office will provide opportunities for regular Academic Web Review meetings. 

Please contact me to schedule a meeting for the fall if desired.  Of course, in addition to the review meetings I am always available to meet on an ad hoc basis with Academic Web Editors and Approvers to discuss academic web concerns.

Training

In departmental web update trainings, 50+ cross-departmental Web Editors have been trained on how to submit edits for approval and publishing on the website.  If you are the editor or approver for your department and still need training please contact me.

New Sites Recently Launched

In coordination with many departments, the following is a short list of some of the major sites that have been added to Bridgeport.edu recently:

·      Family

·      Educational Talent Search

·      Admissions Alumni Volunteer 

·      Student Support Services

·      Orientation

·      Accepted Students area in myUB portal

·      Revamped the International Student Services Site

·      Launched MOX mobile portal landing pages

Social Networking

The Web Office continues to support and coordinate the university’s efforts in social media.  Recently we assisted International Student Services in setting up and promoting a International Student Services Facebook presence, which now has over 160 fans and growing.  I’ve been working with departments to assist them in their social media efforts and can provide guidance and tools to help manage their social media presences.  In the next few months, I will be working with Campus Activities to promote UB in foursquare, which will highlight events and locations around campus.  

SEO

A Search Engine Optimization campaign to address key issues was undertaken last fall.  We have seen positive gains in the placement on search engines and engage in efforts to continually monitor the website.

Corporate Landing Pages

We continue to build out pages for corporations that have agreements with UB to promote our education to their employees.  Each page is customized for each corporation. 

Analytics and Tracking Improvements

As a part of the overall redesign project, analyzing reliable and specific measurement is an important step in understanding how visitors interact with our website.  This semester the Web Office will be continuing work in outlining important conversion points and tracking processes for the new website.  

IDEAL Banner Campaign

We've been working to experiment in new ways to drive traffic to our programs, and one of those ways is a banner campaign.  During the month of May, web adspace ran on the well-known career site, CareerBuilder.  I had the opportunity to work with IDEAL on the banner campaign, which included designing the banners and working with Admissions and our vendor, creating a new inquiry form to handle all inquiries from the campaign.

Necessary Voices Lecture Series Videos

Rounding out last semester I posted the final lecture series video for the successful Necessary Voices series.  View the videos here.

Keeping the Site Current

With so much happening on campus, the amount of effort in keeping the site up to date is tremendous, and the entire campus is involved in the process.

It is a testament to the great faculty and staff at UB that we can continue to refresh and make sure that vital content is added into the site on a regular basis.  Without this ongoing effort, the newly redesigned site would transform from engaging, fresh, and current to old, flat and stale.

Here are some notable stats that I found interesting that illustrate just how busy a spring semester we had creating, updating, and keeping current the UB website:

•    189 new pages since March 3, 2011 on average about 3 per day


•    351 pages updated since March 3, 2011, on average about 6 pages per day


•    56 events posted since March 3, 2011, on average about 1 new event a day

Some of those many edits included the following:

•    Added International College fact sheets

•    Graduate Admissions content updates

•    Adjusted links to UB Online schedule to improve visibility

•    Edited Professional Seminars pages to prepare for this summer's programs

•    Human Resources job postings

•    Added event listings for all spring and fall 2011 events

•    Made substantial edits to all of the Financial Aid sections of the site to keep current

•    Posted CELT calendars

•    Posted International Student Services Newsletters

•    Overhauled entire OPT section for International Student Services website

•    Added Spanish and Portuguese to the language options offered under International Admissions

•    Revamped Student Support Services website

•    Began Drafting a new Health Sciences Continuing Education section

•    Added the ELI brochure to the ELI website, updated costs

•    Updated School of Business site and added new sections to MBA website

•    Edited Orientation pages

•    Edited Accepted Students pages

•    Edited the Key to UB document and provided team site for cross-departmental update process

•    Posted all Commencement information, created new Commencement page

•    Posted the new SGA constitution

•    Revamped Chiropractic Continuing Education pages

•    Added the CAS Application service to Chiropractic area under Health Sciences Admissions

•    Posted upcoming continuing education seminars for Dental Hygiene and Chiropractic

•    Updated the Academic calendar

•    Created an Events RSS feed for use on the portal and for visitors of the site

•    Updated News RSS feed to make it compliant with standards

•    Posted announcements and events to the myUB portal

•    Posted newest Knightlines to Alumni site

•       Added additional videos, new videos include:

                  Residence Life

                  Music Program

Website training available | Contact me for an appointment

Website training is now available for web editors and approvers.

Please contact me to set up a date if you are interested.  As a reminder, if you have not yet, you should also send me your choice of one of the two following options for maintaining content:

A. Get training and make the updates to your own web pages, or
B.  Send the changes to me and I will make the updates for you

Further detail on the process, from a prior e-mail, can be found below this note.  As always, feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.

Spring mid-semester update

Greetings,

So much going on here this semester, really exciting time as we continue to leverage the new website, create new and engaging content, and discover more ways to show what is special about UB on the web.

Training available on web editing

I have been rolling out training in the new system to a small group of Web Editors, so that we can test the system in a limited way before rolling it out fully.  After ensuring that the system is ready for new users, we are now ready to provide training to any Web Editor or Approver that is interested.  Please contact me to set up a session if you are interested!

Improving Academic Pages

Following the rounds of recent Academic Content Review meetings, we have been in the constant process of improving the content of our Academic program pages.  Some of the newest revisions include many Graduate program homepage revamps.  The idea here is too add more imagery, make the pages easier to use, and overall bring a more dynamic look to our Academic program areas.  Here are just a few examples that have been spruced up this semester:

• Martial Arts (B.A.)
• Acupuncture (M.S.Ac.)
• Chiropractic (D.C.)
• Computer Engineering (M.S.)
• Dental Hygiene (M.S.) 
• Education CAS (Sixth Year Certificates) 
• Educational Leadership (Ed.D.)

This effort will continue, and the addition of quality faculty information pages for all programs will bring even further improvement.

Faculty Information Page Project underway

As you may be aware, in UB’s efforts to further highlight the expertise, achievements , research interests and academic credentials of our faculty, we are in the process of creating faculty information pages. 

These pages will include content items that faculty would like to highlight, such as:

• Name
• Title
• Contact Information
• Credentials
• Photo
• Biography
• Research Interests (PDF)
• Selected Publications, Articles & Presentations (PDF)
• Recent Awards, Grants & Professional Activities (PDF)
• Link to CV (PDF)

In order to keep this project moving forward in a timely fashion, I am attaching the link below to an e-form which has been specially designed for submitting information for this project.  Please complete all sections of the form, if applicable.  This will prevent potential delays which may be caused by incomplete submissions. 

Please use this form to submit your information:
http://bridgeport.wufoo.com/forms/submit-faculty-information/

The target deadline date for submission is April 1.

Additionally, in recent work with the International College, we created faculty information pages for the College.  These may also be a helpful starting point as an example.  Here is a link to the listing of the faculty information pages:
http://www.bridgeport.edu/academics/intlcollege/faculty/tward.aspx

The really great thing about this project is that when it is done, we will have a searchable databank of Faculty CVs, Research Interests, and Publications.  This will be a great feature for media looking for faculty experts, institutional grants and research staff, and prospects and parents looking at the quality of our faculty in their decision-making process.

Social Media Efforts

Recent events in the Middle East show us the power of social networking and social media, and how much of a part of daily life it has become.  At UB, we are continually working to improve how we engage with prospects on our social presences. We are making inroads on providing a more engaging social networking experience for prospective students.  Soon there will be a share widget added on every page so that users can share any content that is on the UB website with their friends.  We already have this functionality for all of our videos.

We also link to our social media presences from all pages in the footer of every page on the site.  I also made some initial adjustments to our main UB Social Network Page on bridgeport.edu under Admissions.  I will be adding a box that has our FaceBook status and recent Tweets on to this page soon as well ( http://www.bridgeport.edu/admissions/undergraduate/social.aspx). Finally, we are working with Admissions to improve the quality of our main UB FaceBook page itself by adding new photography, more frequent updates and better copy. 

As far as improving the frequency and dialogue of our social media posts, some significant movement has been made on this front.  I purchased and set up the Hootsuite software, which allows staff that are doing social networking to pre-schedule posts.  This will make it easier for them to post more frequently, coordinate with each other, and help ease the constant burden of frequent posting that is required in this space.  I have met with Career Services, Admissions, IDEAL and set up their accounts, trained them in the software, and they are now using it.  Looking to meet with Alumni and Athletics soon to round out everyone who currently has a social networking presence here at UB.  I am also looking for ways to leverage the work we are already doing- so that any event or news item gets posted to our social media sites automatically. 


Other happenings

Here's the latest roundup on recent web efforts this spring.  The following is a short list of things that have been in the works:

• Launched new Professional Development Seminar website, with sub-sites for the Summer Abroad Program for International Students and IT Governance Seminar
• Continued making improvement son the new Special Student Services site
• Added many upcoming spring events
• Posted the new Music Program video
• Updated NBCE performance data highlighting achievement in the College of Chiropractic
• Added the Nutrition spring 2011 schedule
• Added bio information to the International Student Services staffing page
• added an update to the Alumni site regarding IRS changes
• updated Campus Activities' Student Clubs and Organizations listing 
• Many more edits, improvements, and adjustments throughout the site, including a new Events RSS feed

Web Update, Spring Semester 2011

Hi all,

I'd like to take this opportunity to update everyone on some of the many web activities that have been happening over the break.  Now that we are in the 2011 Spring Semester, many new activities will be beginning and I will detail those below as well.

What's Next?
Training for web editors
Once the testing of the upgrade is completed, I will begin training editors on how to use the content management system.  Please contact me at web@bridgeport.edu if you are interested in being trained.

Faculty Information pages
In the new semester, I will be working with each academic area to create new pages that include faculty bios, research interests, CVs, and more.  The process will start by asking faculty what they will like to see on their pages, and then will continue with the collection of the information, and finaly building of all of the pages.  These pages will be a great informational tool for potential parents, students, and faculty.

What's Happened
Academic Web Content Reviews held
Productive meetings have been held with each academic area discussing their needs and concerns.  Much of the work that occurred after the break has been a direct result of these meetings.

Datatel Upgrade completed
The upgrade of Datatel's ActiveCampus content management system was performed during the break, and the system is being tested to determine if the errors we were having previously have been resolved by the upgrade.

New sites launched
Too many to discuss fully, so here's a list with URLs so you can see for yourself:

• Launched a multilingual International Admissions website - now available in 9(!) different languages
• new Student Support Services site launched
• Redesigned Online and On-campus Nutrition areas
• Redesigned Music (B.M.) website and added faculty bios
• added International College faculty bios
• new Career Services homepage is staged and ready to be launched once final touches are put on by Career Services staff
• new Annual Report page created with the latest Annual Report and archived editions
• added new photography to the residence halls homepage and a listing of campus events
• Updated the Clubs and Organizations listing with new pages for Greek Life, University Singers, and more.
• Posted the newest Necessary voices lecture video featuring Poet Laureate Dick Allen, and improved the entire Necessary Voices lecture site
• created a new Welcome From the Vice Provost Page under Health Sciences
• new Summer Study Abroad at UB and Professional Development Programs pages are ready to launch as soon as we get the green light to go

Post-Launch Search Engine Optimization efforts
We are in the middle of search engine optimization efforts to ensure the new website gains traction with search engines.  These efforts have been ongoing for the past few months, and continue with a formal site optimization via a third party vendor.

Valid Archives available upon request
The full archive of the old Athletics site and the old bridgeport.edu site has been delivered by Sungard.  Please feel free to contact me with any requests you may have for old content and I will be happy to provide you with the content.