The new Philosophy Department website went live on January 17, 2024.
See the new site!
The NGWP Philosophy site took a long time for me to build. This was mostly because it was built with the idea in mind that it would be used as a template for the all CAS academic department sites. More on that below…
What’s New
Condensed “Academics” Information
Since the creation of University-level degree pages, it makes sense now to only provide a nice overview of each department’s degrees within the NGWP sites. Each degree, concentration, minor, or other offering from your department is represented on just one page (like this), with at least one link to University-level pages providing more information. Degrees, and concentrations within those degrees, are linked to their respective marketing and catalog pages. At this time, undergraduate minors only have a catalog entry, to which they are also linked (PHI example).
This accomplishes two things. First of all, modern websites are less text-heavy than their predecessors. Visitors to our websites will need to have their attention grabbed quickly, and we do our best to provide just enough information to capture them. If they want to learn more, they can click again to visit those pages containing more detail. This increases our chances of quickly providing the information they seek in a highly visual manner, giving them a pleasant and efficient website experience.
Second, the information is less redundant and more consistent. Who wants to update two nearly-identical pages every time the information changes? By keeping a condensed version of the information on the department site, we drastically reduce not only redundancy but also the chance for having outdated or inconsistent information. The information is updated in one place – at the University level. Our links don’t change, and the user always sees the most current information available. We can always make quick updates to the department site’s summary information as needed.
Simplified “People” Listings
Similar to Academics, Faculty and Staff listings are now condensed to one main page in the department site, with each linking out to their University-level pages for more details. Elizabeth and I do have editing rights to these directory pages. Each department should have a directory manager with editing capabilities at some point, but for now we are doing our best to set up each person’s directory page for you.
You should know…
New Department Templates
As mentioned above, the NGWP Philosophy site is the template for the rest of CAS’ academic department sites. See, I only have until the end of June to rebuild our remaining 20+ department sites, and time is quickly running out!
So, ITS provided me with a space to build a CAS Department Starter Site, which will become the base for each newly-created department development site going forward.
What it means for your coming site
Your department’s NGWP site will start with an exact clone of this template site. The pages and design blocks are already in place, and I will swap in your department’s images and text. This will speed up the development process, and it also provides a common visual and navigation experience for visitors to all academic department websites within the College of Arts & Sciences.
Call to Action
If we haven’t connected recently about your NGWP site, let’s chat! If we can meet over Teams and walk through your current website together, I can take notes about what’s important to your department and students. Feel free to check my calendar in Outlook and send me an invite for an hour-long meeting. It might only take half an hour, but I like to leave some room for exporing any unique situations or questions your department may have.
As always, feel free to reach out. I look forward to the next phase!
-Sarah
