Month: September 2009

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.

Reminder!

FirstClass email will cease to be used next Tuesday, September 15, 2009, as the Monterey Institute completes its transition to Exchange email hosted by Middlebury College.  If you are still using FirstClass to send email, you should plan to transition to Exchange today. Contact the Helpdesk (ext. 6656) for assistance in accessing your account and setting up your client (Outlook for Windows, Entourage for Mac).

Beginning on Tuesday, 9/15, all email addressed to name@miis.edu will go to the Exchange server at Middlebury.

Unwanted books? Donate them to the library book sale!

If you just moved your office, or cleaned out your closets, you may find yourself with a stack (or boxes!) of unwanted books that you would like to be rid of. Please consider bringing them to the library so we can add them to our annual booksale, scheduled for late October. This way, you can be sure they reach people who really want and need them. And our students really enjoy and anticipate this event, so you’ll be making a real contribution to the MIIS community.

Of course, any books that are suitable for the library collection will be kept and added – another way that you can contribute to making more resources available to students and faculty alike.

Any questions, please contact:

Christie Tam
Reference Librarian/Language Specialist
William Tell Coleman Library


Check out the new web site!

The web strategy team is pleased to invite the MIIS faculty and staff to preview our work in progress. We expect to be ready to launch the site publicly on approximately September 15.

Between now and then, we would like you to be the first to experience some of the new features of this site:

* Language pages (linked from the home page) offer an introduction to MIIS along with relevant dynamic content for eight languages.

* Constituency pages provide lists of the pages most often needed by specific groups.

* “Theme Pages” offer a way to navigate the site by broad area of interest. For example, the Environment page provides links to degree the MBA and MAIEP degrees, as well as to the shorter Conservation Leadership Practicum, offers a list of Environment-related news items, and lists Career resources, employment statistics, etc.

* The “sky” theme of our header photos both celebrates our beautiful location and invites people to shift their focus beyond place to a more global viewpoint… the sky touches everyone, everywhere. We are particularly grateful to Eduardo Fujii, who shared some of his wonderful sky images with us.

* The site is constantly changing and the number of possible contributors is limitless. Many places on the site invite participation in social networks, and there are many examples of content fed dynamically from a blog or twitter account, or from tagged content elements on the site itself. See the bottom of the main Careers page for an example of a twitter feed.

* The search box at the top of each page allows you to go straight to the information you need, including directory information (Just type all or part of a person’s name.)

* On the faculty page, and the offices and services page, you can simply begin typing what you are looking for, and you will be offered options from which to select.

You can access the site at http://miis2.middlebury.edu/

You can only access it from on campus right now.

We want to emphasize that THE SITE IS NOT FINISHED! You will see mistakes, omissions, empty pages, spaces where photos or videos need to be inserted, and placeholder text that needs to be rewritten. Rest assured that the web strategy team is still working hard on content, and Middlebury colleagues remain engaged in fine-tuning the CSS and the content management system. If you notice something amiss with the site, and would like to report it, please do not use the comment feature of this blog to do so. Instead, contact the individual on the web strategy team who represents the department in whose section the problem occurs. The team members are all listed here:

You can also help by contributing stories to the site. You will find some there now, but we need many more to convey the incredible diversity of interests and experiences represented within our community. Please send your stories and images to the appropriate strategy team member as well.