Managing a University's Multi-faceted Web Presence
Karen Berntsen, Information Designer, Carnegie Mellon University
Like other large research universities, Carnegie Mellon is very decentralized. Each of its seven colleges recruits its own students and places most of its decision-making authority at the local departmental level. Because of this “tribal culture”, by the late 1990’s Carnegie Mellon’s web presence was wildly uneven, ranging from highly sophisticated websites to sites that …weren’t. The university realized that not only was there a branding and identity problem, there were duplicate costs and logistical bottlenecks involved with multiple groups outsourcing their websites to local web development firms. In 2003 computing services, in partnership with marketing, decided to offer – for free – the use of a content management system in conjunction with templates for any official university groups interested in building and maintaining their own websites. In her presentation Karen will talk about the process of teaching users from a wide range of backgrounds how to build and maintain their own websites by using the University Templates and CMS.