Mansfield University Blog

The word came down four months ago that it was time to redesign the MU website.
It needed to be more streamlined, dynamic and aimed at recruiting.
Most other colleges would have hired a design agency.  This would have meant  studies, focus groups, committees, meetings. . . .     It would have taken a year, a dozen approvals, and cost upwards of $100,000.
Instead, the provost asked a team on campus to take on the challenge. The group  included PR, Admissions and Campus Technology — mostly CT.
Brian Barden, executive director of Enrollment Services, laid out his vision of what students and parents need to see and how they need to be guided to make their search as easy as possible.
For PR it meant grabbing cameras and photographing students and professors in the classroom and around campus,  and a bunch of  re-writing.
The huge bulk of the responsibility fell to CT under the direction of Suzanne Murphy.
The nuts and bolts, the design, the look, the feel and the intricacies of laying down Ariadne’s thread to guide folks through the labyrinth of today’s college website lay with John Maslar and Kim Hulslander.
All this was done in addition to regular duties. Understand that CT is responsible for maintaining the Web  24 hours a day. They battle spam, viruses,  and malware. They update constantly, quietly, making it look easy.
Also understand in many colleges, the PR, Admissions and CT departments are often at odds. This is a period of huge transition in communications and the road is sometimes rocky.
Not so here. We had a shared purpose. We met regularly to discuss progress and needs. We listened to each other. We fed off each other and compromised for the common good, the vision.
We all pitched in but the Herculean process of turning talk and vision into reality, fell primarily upon John and Kim.
And they came through with flying colors.  I mean that literally. The site is  dynamic, bursting with color and lively typefaces.  It represents MU well.
Doing it in house saved the university up to $100,000.

It is, like all good projects, a work in progress. It will be tweaked and we’ll continue to add photos, rewrite descriptions and listen to suggestions.
The bottom line is that it was a team effort by professionals from different departments who care  about the university.
It was done under pressure in a short amount of time with never a cross word spoken.
This just doesn’t happen at most other universities — or most companies, for that matter.

It’s projects like these that remind me that MU is a  special place with really special people.

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This, I hope, is the last snow picture of the season.

Editor’s note: The Saturday before last I watched at least 10 large flocks of geese honking their way north.  They were followed, 12 hours later, by 15 inches of snow.  No one on the ground was amused.

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Barrage, the high-octane, super talented group of musicians is coming to MU Sunday, March 27 at 7 p.m. in Straughn.  Check out this video and I’ll just bet you’ll want to see them live.

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Grammy and Pulitzer Prize winner George Crumb will be here Thursday, March 24 at 8 p.m. in Steadman for a concert of his works.

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Speaking of music, here’s a new video on our music technology program. Share it with others.

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In case you missed this, Scott Paterno, in his blog last week, makes the argument that if there have to be cuts in PA higher education, all $314 million of Penn State’s state appropriation  should be eliminated and reallocated to the 14 PASSHE institutions.

As Jake says in The Sun Also Rises: “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

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For all you Marcellus Shale geeks (and it should be everyone in this region,) the PA Department of Environmental Protection  has created an Oil and Gas Report which gives production reports, waste reports, and well details among other information.

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Warning: do not drink a bottle of soy sauce as a University of Virginia freshman did on a dare while pledging.  Of  course, his rush to the hospital may have had something to do with meal made of dog food, matzo balls and gefilte fish that is a pledge tradition.

If you’re interested in  MU alumni, local history or college garb in the 1920s, the yearbook The Carontawan, 1918-1990, is now online.  In a short time undergraduate catalogs, alumni directories and selected local history books will also be available.  The project was headed by Sheila Kasperek, reference and electronic resources librarian, with the help of Librarian Fran Garrison and Archives Technician David Guinn.  Here’s a stately photo  of North Hall from the 1926 yearbook.

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The Mansfield University Women’s Center was rededicated Monday in memory of Margaret Launius, a much beloved faculty member who recently died after a long battle with cancer.  President Loeschke led the dedication and Judith Sornberger, professor of English read a poem she wrote, Snapshot of Margaret in the Sunroom.

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The French Club brought a touch of spring and the South to MU this week with their Mardi Gras. The food, music and dancing, for a few hours, took the chill out of a frosty March evening.

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A newly designed website, months in the making, will go live March 11.  While most schools hire an outside firm, the new site was designed and produced in-house by the Campus Technologies  in collaboration with Admissions & Public Relations.  Brian Barden, director of admissions, said the main page will focus on recruitment and promoting MU to prospective students and parents.  “It features the best of our University — our students and academic programs,” Brian said.  A team of randomly selected students also gave it the thumbs up.

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A WikiLeak like site devoted to higher ed whistle blowing may coming to a campus near you, so reports The Daily Pennsylvnian.  The site, Unileaks, aims to expose “corruption and mismanagement” in U.S. colleges, it said in an open letter to college presidents earlier this week.  Unileaks already operates in Australia and the United Kingdom.

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Will the IPad2 revolutionize education?  Will it democratize learning?  Will it become the Watson of the classroom?  This writer thinks so.  As always, read the comments; bright folks hungry for innovation.

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“It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology is not enough.  It’s tech married with the liberal arts and the humanities.” Steve Jobs, introducing the iPad 2.