By Samantha Wickham
1,000 Web Pages and Counting!
www.cals.cornell.edu
The recently launched CALS website features a fresh look, expanded information about the College, and robust architecture for further expansion.
“Users will immediately notice the more attractive design and improved navigation,” says Aaron Goldweber, the College’s webmaster, who managed the 14-month project with a team of content managers and Bob Marteal, the College’s web designer. “As they explore, we hope they’ll find a lot more content to help them connect with the College in new and important ways.”
The website provides 35,000 monthly users with an audience-based navigation system with links intended for prospective students, current students, alumni/families/friends, faculty/staff, and the general public. The homepage highlights CALS-specific news stories along with links to information about the College’s academic priorities, vision and mission, and administration and a directory of the various “campus destinations” associated with CALS. Prominent links will bring users to information about the College’s teaching, research, and extension program areas. www.cals.cornell.edu
The CALS Admissions site is modeled on their recently published viewbook for prospective students. It focuses on making the application process to CALS informative and easy to follow. Located one level down from the section for prospective students, it directs potential applicants to information about the College, including profiles of current students, information about the faculty, and overviews of all the possible majors within CALS. It also contains links to online applications for first-year and transfer students, along with other information regarding the admissions process. www.cals.cornell.edu/prospective/admissions
Because CALS has a strong land-grant focus, the revamped homepage also includes links to Impact statements that offer a wealth of information about how CALS research and extension programs benefit communities in New York, in other parts of the United States, and in many places around the world. Impact links include overviews of the College’s programs on biofuels and renewable energy systems, the dairy and wine industries, and safer food products, to name just a few. www.cals.cornell.edu/cals/public/impact
Linked from this page is the Impact portal, which delivers nearly 600 specific examples of the College's innovative research, teaching, and outreach projects, directly reported by faculty. This completely new content area is based on a fully searchable database and will be updated yearly. http://research.cals.cornell.edu/index.jsp?home=6
The CALS research portal—another innovation—is a content-heavy database that provides information about the people, grants, collections, projects, events, and facilities that make the CALS research environment so vibrant. It is full-text and keyword searchable. www.cals.cornell.edu/research/
The CALS website has undergone several major redesigns since it was first launched in the early 1990s. The last major redesign and launch took place in 2004. When Cornell adopted a new logo, extensively redesigned the cornell.edu website, and instituted a campus-wide content management system called CommonSpot in 2005, University Communications launched a sweeping initiative to have all colleges adopt the new look. The CALS website has been rebuilt in response to these initiatives.
CommonSpot makes management and maintenance of websites easier and empowers content curators working on a local level to do their own page design and updates. Now that the main administration pages have been rebuilt, the College’s web team will be helping the academic departments migrate to CommonSpot. Changes are happening daily.
The CALS web team welcomes feedback and suggestions at calsweb@cornell.edu.