Student Affairs Communications Group Minutes
January 29, 2014
Attendance: Kami Hammerschmith, Kent Sumner, Brianna McNall, Marigold
Holmes, Colleen Schlonga, Wendy Little, Majeed Badizadegan, Jen Still, David Baker,
Santiago Uceda, Jennifer Edwards, Michele Ribeiro
Next meeting of the Student Affairs Communications Group will be Wednesday,
February 12, 2014, 9 a.m. -10:30 a.m., MU Council Room. Topic: Analytics,
Information Sharing and Decision Making with Nancy Raskauskas, UHDS, and
Majeed Badizadegan, RecSports.
Today
David Baker and Santiago Uceda from Interactive Communications (formerly Web
Communications) held a discussion around the redesign of the OSU homepage. They
are working to be inclusive in the process by making rounds to include many groups
on campus.
The last OSU homepage redesign was done in 2009 after seven years of no change.
They were hoping for an iterative process, but it didn’t work, so they are trying to
make it happen this time.
The focus of the OSU homepage is marketing and recruiting for new/prospective
students. There are close to 200 links on the homepage. Currently content is
supplied by Drupal and then goes through a custom system that changes it to HTML
for stability. Drupal has improved in the past five years, so they won’t need the
additional complex architecture in the redesign.
David and Santiago asked for any thoughts on the current homepage? What’s
working? Challenges?
They were asked about the stories on the homepage. David said they average two to
three stories per month that rotate. Each story averages about 2000 hits. They
source stories from around campus. They always want to include a research story.
Other stories about young alums, academic success, student/faculty interaction is
also of interest. They try to have a balance represented at all times. If you have a
story idea, e-mail it to Callie Newton and David Baker for their editorial committee
to review.
Attendees said they liked the links on the side of the homepage to select what
demographic you represent (prospective student, current student, faculty/staff,
alumni, etc.).
It was mentioned that many students just go to the links at the bottom of the page.
The top right campus image has a plus sign that links to a slideshow. Many in
attendance did not know about the slideshow capability.
The new design will be responsive. David said they hope that the current design will
be responsive in 6-8 weeks.
After meeting with groups for feedback, Interactive Communications will present
some homepage options to gather feedback. David said his ambitious launch goal is
Fall 2014.
It was asked how the marketing campaign “Beaver Nation” can be promoted more
on the homepage?
Michele expressed a concern about the Miller Light billboard on Hwy 34 that uses
the “Beaver Nation” tagline. It looks like OSU is endorsing Miller Light.
Jennifer said that Arizona State University used their myASU as a portal to access
many of the items OSU has on their current homepage. OSU may want to push
students, faculty and staff to utilize myOSU as a portal.
David said if there are any further thoughts to feel free to share them with him
through the process.