Website Academic Page Guidelines

Approach/philosophy of academic department pages

  • These pages are foremost designed to communicate to prospective students and their parents. Our goal is to feature the content that they actively seek.
  • As communications experts, the marketing office is charged with determining the best ways to display information on the website, although we are not program experts and rely on faculty expertise to shape that content.
  • Our approach is to communicate concisely and clearly about what differentiates us from other institutions. Our goal is to provide clear examples wherever possible of the benefits of studying specific subjects at Saint Michael’s versus elsewhere..

The standard content that we help manage

  • Catalog links to major/minor (content changes go to the Executive Assistant to the Dean of the College, tarcury@smcvt.edu)
  • Opportunities in the major such as internships, research or any other unique aspects of the program
  • Information that prospective students often seek/ask of professors and admission counselors
  • As needed, we’ll provide efficient ways to share:
    o news (collected/maintained by administrative assistant, submitted to Director of Marketing, blindau@smcvt.edu)
    o events (collected/maintained by administrative assistant, submitted to Director of Marketing, blindau@smcvt.edu)
  • Career Information, Alumni Profiles (solicited by academic departments in conjunction with the alumni office)
  • Blogs (supported by the Assistant Director of Marketing, mwood@smcvt.edu)

How we update department pages

  1. The marketing office will meet with departments individually and discuss content items outlined above
  2. If the department has a separate site in FrontPage, we’ll evaluate the content and discuss what may be included on the main site instead
  3. Following the meeting, the marketing office will make note of possible unique aspects to highlight on the website and will send questions back to faculty members for more details
  4. Faculty members send information back for marketing to re-work into new web copy
  5. When the revisions to the academic department web pages have been completed, marketing will send them to the department for review. Upon approval, the revised pages will be made live.
  6. Marketing will monitor the analytics on the department’s pages and will work with the department to make improvements as needed.
  7. For professors interested in blogging, Mallory will set up the blog and administer training. She will assist with any questions/issues along the way, and monitor the blog’s analytics in order to send periodic updates to the writers.

How department pages are maintained

  • Department administrative assistants will make ongoing content changes to the academic web pages (such as updates to faculty profile changes and news & events). Please send those requests directly to the administrative assistant.
  • Any requests dealing with blue box link changes, banner ads, right-column callouts, graphics, or photo insertion will continue to go through the marketing office. Please send those requests directly to webrequests@smcvt.edu.

Please contact Sarah Gagne (sgagne@smcvt.edu, x2447) with any questions.