Day: September 16, 2009

Writing Center Opens September 21

Faculty and staff, please share this information about the Writing Center with your students:

Make your appointment for the Graduate Writing Center beginning Monday, September 21st, and visit us on the web .  From blank sheet of paper to polished copy, the Graduate Writing Center loves to help bring beautiful words into the world. Do you have punctuation problems? Development dilemmas? Writer’s block? Grammar headaches? Word choice worries? Never fear! The Graduate Writing Center is here! You can find us on the west wing of the Simoneau house at 456 Van Buren Street. We offer one-hour appointments (limited to one per student per week), but if there is an open slot that no one is using, you can just drop in! The grand opening for the fall 2009 semester will occur on September 28th, but you can begin making appointments on September 21st using the sign up sheet outside the GWC. The writing center will be open from 2-8 Monday through Thursday and from 10-4 on Fridays. Spanish Tutoring is offered Monday and Tuesday from 2-3. Chinese tutoring is offered Monday and Thursday from 7-8. Arabic is available Monday 6-7, Thursday 4-7, and Friday 2-4. We look forward to another great semester working with you!

The New Website is Live!

The new website is now live and functioning!  This has been due to the amazing effort of the web strategy team and they deserve all of your praise and appreciation.  Please give them an extra smile…

There are a few things to know about the ramifications of a new website:

  • URLs have changed.  They should now make more sense, but please update any mailings or emails in which you use URLs to make sure they are the latest and greatest.
  • Some people might still see the old site and that’s normal.  The web is a tricky thing and it may take up to two weeks for the new site to be everywhere.
  • The website is not “done”.  It never will be.  We need to keep working on it and making it better, adding stories and enhancing the information that we already have.
  • There will be mistakes in the site – many mistakes are actually also on our old site, but we need everyone’s help to keep the site updated and correct – no one person can catch everything and misspellings happen to the best of us.

If you find any mistakes, please send them to the appropriate strategy team member.

About: Jason Warburg or Anne-Marie Steiger
Admissions: Rob Horgan
Academics: Nina Dutra (GSIPM), Angie Quesenberry (GSTILE), Patricia Szasz (ESL), Alicia Brent (SILP,CLS)
Community: Gail Lu
Careers: Jen Hambleton
Giving: Linae Ishii-Devine
Offices & Services: Lynn McDonald
Language Pages: Lynn McDonald
MIIS around the World Stories: Rebecca Walters
Constituency Pages: Kristen Byers
Homepage & General Tech: Kristen Byers & Lynn McDonald

Before sending these folks the mistakes, make sure you’ve included at least one compliment – they have worked hard on the site and need to know the good as well and what should change.

Middlebury is also hard at work redesigning their website.  Our website will continue to improve as more tools are implemented for both schools.  Things coming down the line are additional functionality for course descriptions/schedules, customizable pages for our community, and Banner connection to profiles.  We will let you know when we know more.  For more information on the website redesign for both schools, visit the website redesign blog.