By Daisy Perper — Apr 27, 2021 11:00 AM
About
Chatham University is a private university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Chatham has an enrollment of over 2,200 students across over 60 undergraduate and graduate programs in areas of sustainability & health, business & communications, and the arts & sciences.
Why Cascade CMS?
Chatham University decided to implement Cascade CMS to fuel the university website after frustrations came to light with no CMS system in place. Previously, all of Chatham’s site edits and functionality were handled through the IT Web Services Team. The volume and type of requests were creating a burden on the IT team, preventing quick turn-around on simple web updates and creating a backlog of other priority web services work. After a formal review and selection process, it was determined that Cascade CMS best fit the university's needs and wants.
The shift to Cascade CMS enabled the Marketing team to take control of content creation, edits and other web needs while freeing up the Web Services Team for higher-priority web and student services projects.
Chatham structured their contributor team with efficiency and ease-of-use in mind. This is made possible by the user-friendly interface as well as quick training opportunities by full-time employees. The feedback from the team has been overall positive, stating that there have been very few issues that required more than a quick solution.
Website Redesign
After the initial Cascade CMS implementation, Chatham University worked with design partner OHO Interactive to launch a full redesign of the university website while utilizing easy-to-use templates from the Cascade Exchange. Having launched Spring 2020, Chatham has worked with OHO as well as the Hannon Hill team to adjust those templates to meet additional needs. Launching right around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, the team was pleased with the flexibility the CMS allowed for as they saw an influx of needed pages and initiatives.
Wrap-up
After seeing the need for a change, Chatham University made the shift to Cascade CMS and has been very pleased with the overall results as well as the growth opportunities as the website continues to evolve.
For a more in-depth review of how Chatham University determined that Cascade CMS was the best fit for their organization and insights into their experience thus far, we invite you to check out our recently published case study.
