WEBMASTERS COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES

February 10, 2004

Members present: Jamie Bethel, Marty Fettman, Tom Harmon, Charlie Kerlee, Jill Lenz, Erin Napier, Mary Pridgen, Linda Tarnoff, Sallie Varner.

Sallie Varner, Chair, began the meeting at 9 am.

Old Business

  1. As mentioned in our last meeting, Jill is starting to work on modifying our critical web pages regarding web accessibility and other issues. She explained the "Web Management Project" which begins with her modifying the critical pages. It also includes basic housekeeping tasks for webmasters. The complete presentation is available at http://www.cvmbs.colostate.edu/intech/jill/2004_web_project/project.htm

New Business

  1. CSU web portal -- informational sessions held February 5-6. How will this project affect us? - Item on hold until March meeting.

  2. From Jill: Can we remove the "Department Reorganization" link under Academic Departments now? If not, when? It was agreed this could be removed. Jill will remove it.

  3. Is the content on the Dean's Personnel page at: http://www.cvmbs.colostate.edu/cvmbs/personel.html supposed to match the organizational chart linked at the bottom of the page to http://www.cvmbs.colostate.edu/cvmbs/DeanOrgChart.pdf ? Yes, per Linda. Thom Hadley will be updating the original Excel spreadsheet and regenerating the organizational chart as a PDF file. It was suggested that a legend be added to the PDF file to describe what the dotted line means. Linda will update the HTML page information to match the new PDF.

  4. The Residency Programs flyout has been modified to include the new category "Post-DVM Combined MS/Residency in Clinical Sciences <http://www.cvmbs.colostate.edu/clinsci/residencies.HTM>" and eliminate the previous categories of Large Animal Surgery, Small Animal Surgery, Small Animal Medicine and Oncology per Charlie Kerlee. A date typo was pointed out that Charlie will fix.

    As a side note, we visited the PRSE page. It is up to date as the listing recently changed, however, the CETT home page at http://www.cvmbs.colostate.edu/enhealth/cett/ still has a reference to it being a PRSE. Mary will contact Linda Monum who maintains this page to remove this reference. We also followed the PRSE link to the "Orthopaedic Research Center". It was mentioned that Dr. Simon Turner's component of this program is not represented at this time. It was suggested that Dr. Turner be encouraged to develop a web page for his component since it is now a PRSE, then the link could point to a more inclusive page with links to both components. Charlie will investigate this.

  5. Are all the links from http://www.cvmbs.colostate.edu/cvmbs/acadpro.html pointing to up-to-date pages? Yes, Linda recently updated these.

  6. Visit Colostate web page -- http://visit.colostate.edu/ . Linda Tarnoff suggested discussing whether we might have a use for this sort of page for CVMBS. - Item on hold until March meeting.

  7. Per Ken Blehm via Jill: Ken is aware there is a link to "Career Services" under the Administration flyout. Ken feels that prospective students, their parents and current students have needs for career services such as mock interviews and other services provided by Ruth and Erin, and in its current location as a flyout under "Administration", or as text alone, it is not visible enough. He requests we permanently add a "Career Services" photo of Ruth White and Erin Fendrich together on the College Home Page with a short blurb linking their names to their respective web pages near the Insight logo, something like "Explore Career Services with Ruth White, Veterinary Career Coordinator, and Erin Fendrich, CSU Career Center Liaison". Per Ken, Ruth and Erin have agreed that they would like their picture together and their web page links on the College Home Page. Second choice would be to add "Career Services" to the left navigation with flyout links to Ruth's page at http://www.cvmbs.colostate.edu/cvmbs/pvm.careers.html , Erin's page at http://www.cvmbs.colostate.edu/cvmbs/cvmbscareers.html , the CSU Career Center at http://career.stuser.colostate.edu/ and possibly others. Third choice would be to add "Career Services" to the second row of navigation towards the top of the page.

    Discussion followed. It was agreed a permanent link would be added to the end of the second row of navigation links toward the top of the page. The committee felt this was the most visible position in the top navigation area, and that the top navigation area was more visible than the left navigation area with flyouts. Sallie will make this addition.

    The committee would entertain the idea of temporarily hosting a photo or multiple rotating photos of the counselors engaged in their activities such as counseling, mock interviews or hosting a career fair for example (vs. a portrait type photo of them together) with an accompanying text blurb to describe the services, embedded with links to career services pages or a single page. This would be located in the "In The News" section at two peak times of the year as decided by Career Services for a 2-4 week period each time. Mary Pridgen volunteered to photograph the counselors engaged in activity during CSU time. Jill will speak with Ken about this idea and if pursued, will talk to Ruth and Erin about Mary's photography offer.

  8. Per Ken Blehm via Jill: Permanently add an "Awards" photo and link to the College Home Page as the last item of the "In The News" section. This would link to a page of awards similar to the Scholarships and Awards page at http://www.cvmbs.colostate.edu/cvmbs/scholar.html, but would be a more comprehensive list updated annually that includes awards that are donor based, faculty based, and university based such as advising awards, Distinguished Teaching Scholars, the Barbara Cox Anthony Endowed University Chair, the Oliver P. Pennock Distinguished Service Award, etc. Award winners in the College would all be recognized as a nice gesture to them and as a marketing tool. Per Ken, Linda Tarnoff will soon be posting a web page or PDF file of this information that Ken compiled of all the awards broken down into categories.

    Linda mentioned the page she recently posted for Ken was at http://www.cvmbs.colostate.edu/cvmbs/Spring2003Awards.pdf. To navigate to this page from the College Home Page, follow the "Students" link to the "Student Information" page and look under the first category "Prospective Students" for the link to "Scholarships, College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences". There was some confusion about this newly posted page. Does this serve as a marketing tool to celebrate an all inclusive list of all award winners in the College? If so, in its current status (appearance) it doesn't warrant a link from the College Home Page; it would be unusual to link directly to a lengthy PDF as it exists now. More questions that Jill will take back to Ken include: Is this an all inclusive dynamic list that will need updating weekly or monthly as new awards are distributed or a static annual list that only requires maintenance once a year? Regarding the "Awards" photo, could Ken provide a new image every 3-4 weeks if it is a dynamic list or at least one representative photo if it is a static list? This item will be revisited at the next meeting.

  9. Jamie's email: "I am trying to find out if anyone is interested in the print blocking software that was discussed in one of the previous meetings. Below is an email that I sent to the WebCT folks that explains things. If you have a need and are interested in using this software please let me know."

    Report from Jamie: So far 25 licenses will be purchased. Jamie said there are two holes discovered so far in the software. 1) Screen capture programs like SnagIt or Hypersnap can capture an image of the screen and then users may print from the screen capture program or any program that will allow the insertion of an image and printing. There is no known solution to stop this. 2) For pages only partially encrypted, uses can view the source code, take out the encrypting code, save the file and when opened again, the encrypting code is gone. The solution is to encrypt the whole page, a choice within the software, or add Javascript to the page to have it open in a new window without browser controls to access the commands File > Print. Marty mentioned that opening a new window without browser controls has worked well to prevent printing of WebCT quizzes.

The meeting concluded at 10:00 am.

The next meeting will be held on Tuesday, March 9, 9:00-10:00 am , W1 A/Z.

Minutes submitted by Jill Lenz.

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