FINAL REPORT OF THE GRADUATE CENTER 
WEB PLANNING COMMITTEE

Status Updates (in bold)
Dec. 16, 2008

Annotations (in italics)
Jan. 23, 2009

presented to President Kelly and Provost Edwards
September 2007

REPORT OF THE GC WEB PLANNING COMMITTEE

The Graduate Center’s web planning committee was constituted by President Kelly and Acting Provost Edwards in fall 2006 to review The Graduate Center’s overall profile and presence on the Internet, with particular reference to the quality and functionality of the GC’s main page (www.gc.cuny.edu), as well as the various websites maintained by doctoral programs, research centers and institutes, and administrative offices. A committee of more than a dozen, composed largely of Grad Center administrators and representing a breadth of perspectives and constituencies, met a number of times during late fall 2006-spring 2007 to consider the GC’s current web presence and offer a series of recommendations to improve the GC’s use of the Internet. 

The committee’s overall goals included: 
•	to evaluate the quality and tone of the messages diverse websites conveyed about The Graduate Center to internal and external publics, especially individuals interested in finding out about GC’s doctoral programs and the work of its research centers and institutes;
•	to evaluate procedures for designing and updating GC’s diverse web pages and to suggest ways to make websites more user friendly and effective in conveying important ideas and information; 
•	to consider appropriate technical improvements to current web development, serving and updating processes, including integration and simplification of data generation and website display;
•	to determine the most appropriate staffing configurations for designing and maintaining websites and to determine the best professional development opportunities for web development and maintenance for members of our community; 
•	to develop an action plan for improving the GC web sites, including an appropriate recommended budget, encompassing both personnel and hardware/software costs, to bring that plan to fruition. 

Committee members: Rashi Asthana, Steve Brier (chair), Robert Campbell, Julie Cunningham, Barry Disman, Matthew Liston, Marilyn Marzolf, Jesse Merandy, Robert Nival, Marisa Panzani, Nan Shaw, Ray Soldavin, and Julia Wrigley (Rosa Rivera, staff to the committee).

BACKGROUND
The Graduate Center’s web presence has evolved in a largely uncoordinated way over the past decade, reflecting the interest and aptitude of individual members of the community who either seized the initiative in their offices and programs or were pressed into service to harness the growing power of the World Wide Web in support of the GC’s overall educational mission. What followed was a kind of hit and miss creation of a variety of administrative and academic websites, linked to individual academic programs, research centers, and administrative offices. The Public Affairs office launched and maintained an increasingly elaborate “main page” for The Graduate Center, which played an important “gateway” function, providing the general public with information about The Graduate Center as well as linking that public to the growing number of separate GC administrative and academic websites (now totaling almost 100). The GC main page has continued to expand and be refined over the past few years, relying on the design eye of Barry Disman for its look and feel. 

About five years ago, then Provost Kelly asked then Associate Provost Brier to examine the web sites of the 31 doctoral program and determine how best we might keep those websites functional and updated with current information about the Ph.D. programs, given the increasing role the web was playing in introducing prospective students to doctoral education in general and The Graduate Center’s Ph.D. programs in specific. That focus on doctoral program websites yielded positive results over the past few years, with each program site being refreshed or re-designed and webmasters in each program, where available, receiving basic technical training in website maintenance and updating. That effort was accomplished through the efforts of a twenty-hour per week doctoral student with web skills (there have been three different students in the position over the past five years), who was given the responsibility of working directly with the doctoral programs to re-design and update their sites. Over the past few years that effort was occasionally broadened to update the websites of research centers and institutes whose pages were woefully out of date or non-functional. Other GC sites were created and maintained in an ad hoc manner, either because programs came up with a bit of funding to pay a student or to hire an outside web designer or because someone in the office or program was personally or professionally interested in web design. While the GC was in the midst of this slow evolution of our web presence, the World Wide Web was undergoing a rapid evolution away from narrow information delivery (what came to be called “Web 1.0”) toward a growing emphasis on user interactivity, including web-based processing, social interaction and business-to-business marketing and sales (denoted as “Web 2.0”).

EVALUATION OF CURRENT GC WEB PRESENCE
There was broad agreement on the committee that the GC’s various web pages needed to do a better job communicating a unified set of messages about who we are, what we do, and offer a clearer path for people, both inside and outside the community, who wish not only to gain access to information about the GC’s programs, public offerings, and other vital data about The Graduate Center but also to use the web to activate their involvement with the GC. 

Early on its deliberations the committee decided to divide its efforts and work between two parallel sub-committees:
•	a “back-end” database group (Rashi Asthana, Steve Brier, Bob Campbell [chair], Julie Cunningham, Barry Disman, Matt Liston and Marisa Panzani) to consider technical (hardware and software) and functionality questions and plans; 
•	a “front end” group (Steve Brier [chair], Julie Cunningham, Barry Disman, Marilyn Marzolf, Robert Nival, Marisa Panzani, Nan Shaw, Ray Soldavin and Julia Wrigley) to consider design and implementation issues (the user experience of the web).

These two sub-committees met separately and then reconvened as a full committee to hear each group’s recommendations and reach consensus. There was general agreement that we needed to minimize the sheer distinctiveness and growing diversity of GC websites. We need to establish a structural format that allows some individuality for program, center, and office sites (allowing offices and programs to continue to “own” their pages), while creating some clear and well-articulated visual cues and designs that unite and link all GC web pages. One possible approach to consider is that all basic website design processes are overseen by a web design team supported by a web advisory committee (see p. 8 below for details), rather than continue to rely on the decentralized, even fragmented, processes and procedures we now employ. Basic web site design processes should include both the aesthetics of visual design and also navigational design.  However, it is recognized that, in addition to balancing the need for design cohesiveness and functional flexibility, web pages should not be designed by committee. 

Even if we centralize the process of web design and development, we will still have to deal with the fact that a range of individuals will be responsible for updating information on specific websites. This reality poses challenges regarding accuracy of data and information as well as ongoing professional development of webmasters who are responsible for updating the data on specific office and program pages on a regular basis. 

The committee agreed on the need to establish unified and updated databases (Banner student and employee data is but one illustration) in a centralized repository that will help create uniform data that will be displayed consistently across several or all GC’s websites, thus helping eliminate out-of-date information at the same time as it leads to  measurable operational efficiencies. Thanks to the efforts of committee member Marisa Panzani in Student Affairs, we now have a complete survey of what kinds of information each of the 31 doctoral program sites provides to current and prospective students (see attached spreadsheet), which will be a good starting point for determining where further work needs to be done on program sites and in developing a unified database. We also learned that Barbara Fish in the Provost’s office is currently working on a related initiative and the hope is that she would be able to use a resource that sits inside of Banner to enable faculty to post their professional information themselves, which we can then deploy to update website entries about our faculty across a number of GC sites.  We agreed that we wanted to develop a list of minimum data (e.g., areas of research interest, publications, awards, etc.) for each doctoral faculty member as opposed to allowing each individual doctoral program to determine what it wants to maintain or display about its faculty. The committee thought that it would be a good idea to use the fall EO Cluster meetings to build consensus in the doctoral programs as to exactly what kinds and quantity of faculty data should be included on each doctoral program site. 

The committee members strongly supported broad consultation with the GC community to garner faculty, staff and student input after the committee makes its overall recommendations. The consultative process should include Graduate Council, Doctoral Faculty Policy Committee, Doctoral Students Council, Central Faculty Steering Committee, the Council of EOs and EO Cluster meetings, the APO Council, and the Center/Institute Directors.

Web committee members agreed that the GC was not taking full advantage of the growing multimedia possibilities that the Internet currently offers, specifically the use of video and audio “podcasting” and streaming of public and academic events. There was strong consensus that we needed to incorporate these newer digital technologies into our websites as a way to reach out to new academic and public audiences to attract people to what the GC has to offer. There was also general agreement that we needed to do a much better job incorporating imagery, especially photos of our students and faculty into our various websites, that we needed to do a better job of accurately tracking web usage statistics, and to make it possible for members of the general public to easily use our website to obtain information, register for events, and make donations.  There was unanimity that we needed to consolidate our web servers (eliminating the separate web.gc.cuny.edu and www.gc.cuny.edu domains) into a single, robust web server with “failover” or redundancy capability to eliminate any chance of down time. These new resources have major fiscal implications and will take a good deal of staff time and effort to implement and maintain.

SPECIFIC COMMITTEE RECOMMENDATIONS:
Web Content 
•	Our collective web presence must be designed to serve the needs of diverse constituencies, including prospective and students; faculty, and administrators; alumni; retirees, donors, members of the press, the general public, and those interested in attending GC public events.  COMMENTS: be sensitive to click-counts and ease of navigation.
•	“Official” GC website (the Main page) will now be called the “GC Homepage” and will include all links to official GC data sources.  
•	Solicit input from various GC constituencies beginning in the fall about what kinds of information they would like to see on the GC Homepage and what kinds of added features and data they would like to see on their own GC sites, including updated and consistent faculty data on all doctoral program sites.  COMMENTS:  current GC page looks and feels cluttered, too packed with links; perhaps we can group some items into larger categories (for example, “Academics” including PhD programs, SPS, SoJ, etc.); less may be more with regard to our homepage design.  Avoid a “balkanized” approach to the many websites across the GC.   Promote student recruitment via our web presence.  Stress opportunities for meaningful communication with students and other members of the GC community, recognizing the rapidly changing social climate.  Engage social networking; leverage such communities (for example, with alumni).  Give strong consideration to a content management system.
•	Development and Continuing Ed and Public Programs must be linked to the new GC Homepage in ways that make it possible for members of public to find out about our public events via a database-driven Event Calendar), to register for public events online, and to make online donations while allowing us to capture crucial contact information for individuals via web-based processes, online survey tools, event management and promotion software, and the like.
•	Pay special attention to the various Library web pages and web-based services, which currently serve as key gateways to accessing online data for our students and faculty and were developed and are maintained by several library staff members; these sites will require dedicated web resources to redesign, update, and maintain them in the future.  COMMENTS: current challenges include the multiple identities that students have across CUNY campuses.  Single sign-on should be a goal. Noted that the Library is now using Dreamweaver and Contribute.
•	Standard administrative and academic forms should be available from a single source on all GC websites (probably in PDF format) for completion electronically and online filing; completion and submission of forms online should trigger other electronic processes as much as possible that allow requests (e.g., for new computer accounts) to be fulfilled automatically rather than manually.  Initiated for prototyping.  COMMENTS: consider establishing a portal or a user log-in process that takes advantage of identity management; however, also support free-form browsing.  Note the impact of CUNY FIRST on this entire bullet point.
•	Information that commonly appears on web pages such as directory information, building hours, tuition, library hours, etc. should be available from a single source.  In the construction of all new web pages, links are made directly to the Graduate Center pages containing the information including tuition, hours, academic calendar, admission, and financial aid.  COMMENTS: course listings/descriptions in Banner may not be conducive as currently configured.  Note that we have an advantage with Banner for “single source” that will diminish as CUNY FIRST takes hold.
•	Showcase on the web what our faculty and students are doing in terms of teaching and doing research with new technology tools, including work of the New Media Lab, Ph.D. programs such as Music, Research Computing, and cutting-edge online writing and publication projects.  COMMENTS: provide opportunities for video snippets (being mindful of length); consider establishing a digital commons.  Be mindful that there are many independent websites where members of the GC community may be represented; seek and reach out to those resources lest they evolve without our awareness or influence.
•	Establish processes and procedures to facilitate individual GC faculty and doctoral students who wish to create, maintain and have their professional websites served on GC web servers.  All faculty requests for personal pages and webserver space were granted following this initiative. Typically faculty member were given space within their Programs server space. Demand was low to host personal professional pages, totally 3 or 4 faculty members.

Barry’s Update
Since this report was issued we have made significant progress in two areas of the GC website. 

For the administrative offices we built, or rebuilt, the following administrative websites: 
•	Office of Affirmative Action <http://www.gc.cuny.edu/admin_offices/affirmative_action/index.htm>; 
•	Alumni <http://www.gc.cuny.edu/alumni/alumni_index.htm>: 
•	Office of Human Resources <http://web.gc.cuny.edu/HumanResources/>; 
•	Office of Development <http://www.gc.cuny.edu/support/index.htm>; 
•	Office of the Provost and Senior Vice President <http://web.gc.cuny.edu/provost/index.htm>; 
•	Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs (Current Students) <http://www.gc.cuny.edu/current_students/index.htm>: 
•	Office of Security and Public Safety <http://web.gc.cuny.edu/security/Default.htm>. 
•	(The website for the Office of Finance and Administration is partially completed) 
•	A new Site Map

I don’t know if the automatic Events feed (http://www.gc.cuny.edu/events/index.htm) was in place when this report was last issued, but it has been working very successfully.

For the Office of Institutional Advancement we built, launched, and are currently completing our first semester with the Graduate Center’s Online Community. We have been using the interactivity of these pages for Online Event Registrations, including automatic Event Registration Confirmations and Event Reminders, and email notices to the online constituency. After a version upgrade of Blackbaud NetCommunity scheduled for mid-December we will begin using these pages for online donations to the GC. We will also then begin building new Alumni pages to include an Alumni Directory; a “Class Notes” section; as well as a resource for Alumni social interaction. We will also begin using more of the interactive features of NetCommunity for the general online community, including more communications, and more content targeted to specified areas of interest.

Web Design 
•	Establish a simple uniformity of look and feel for all GC websites, including development of basic web page templates (e.g., inclusion and placement of GC logo), while allowing for continued individuality and customization of overall office, center and program websites.  COMMENTS: consider a top-down approach to website design, rather than a bottom-up approach, or better yet a compromise that provides for clear affiliation with the Graduate Center but enables individual programs to create a sense of identity.  Manage this issue with Centers with sensitivity, noting that many Center websites already feature better designs and are more fully-featured.
•	GC sites that do not currently incorporate the GC logo and a “hotlink” to the GC Homepage URL must do so immediately.  All pages currently have the GC logo featured predominately on the site, which links to the Graduate Center home page.
•	GC sites that currently are hosted by outside providers (i.e., those that don’t use the GC URL) should move back to the new GC web server environment as soon as possible (while allowing aliasing from old URLs to the GC URL).  Currently only 6 Research Centers and Institutes and 2 programs are hosted outside of the GC. Of the two programs, one is hosted on the Computer Sciences’ own server and the other is hosted by Baruch due to the programs location and strong affiliation with this campus. The Research Centers hosted off of GC servers, likewise, typically have affiliations that create situational hosting conflicts.  The following are the research centers still off of the GC servers: Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, CUNY Institute for Software Design and Development (CISDD), Gotham Center for New York City History, Howard Samuels Center, RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, Center for the Humanities.  COMMENTS: consider establishing “.gc.cuny.edu” URLs that provide redirects to currently-independent URLs 
•	Ensure that users can navigate the GC Homepage quickly and efficiently; note that the Google search engine is currently in place.  
•	Establish a central web development support team in Steve Brier’s office that continues the two current part-time web developers and adds one full-time web designer/developer who would oversee web development for all offices and programs and be the “go to” place for help and support, including training of local office and program webmasters.  A webmasters meeting was called to order on April 4th, which invited all webmasters for the Programs at the GC to voice their concerns, frustrations and needs. One result of this meeting was the recognized need for additional meetings of all webmasters in the future. In addition a Webmasters’ Website was created to enhance the IT office’s webdesign services presence, which provides links to all documents listed below, and provides information about meetings and important developments in IT related to web design. 
o	List of Services 1-sheet document: details the IT services available to program webmasters which and new hires (EOs and APOs)
o	Best Practices Document: a best practices/site requirements document created to replace the webmaster’s manual previously offered. April 4   
•	Implement modern web technologies, including graphical representation of information, audio and video streaming (“podcasting”) of academic and public events and programs, statistical analysis of website activity, search tools, web-based collaboration tools, web access to files, and the like.   COMMENTS: there is an urgent need for tracking information on our website visitors and users; Google Analytics appears to be the appropriate resource.  Note that we have seasonal patterns of usage, based on key dates (admissions, for example).  Need to know how our potential applicants arrive at the GC site.  Departments interested in pursuing upgrades or enhancements to websites should pursue conversation with IT to plan and organize such projects.
•	Special attention should be paid to accessibility issues and questions, with commitment to make all GC web pages useable by individuals with disabilities; as well as all matters concerning student and employee privacy.   

Technical Processes and Standards
•	Data displayed on the websites should be drawn from several authoritative data sources for as many key web listings as possible to enable us to serve validated content from a single source to multiple destinations in an automated and managed fashion (for example, utilizing class schedule information, faculty profiles and admissions data in Banner to populate academic program websites; utilizing event scheduling data to populate kiosk content). Such data should include: academic calendar; current course listings and faculty profiles (from Banner); employee profiles; admission and tuition information; financial aid information; GC organizational structure, including employee contact information (email addresses and phone extensions); facilities (room set up) characteristics (linked to Room Reservation).  Marisa Panzani has gone through all Program websites to determine where all admissions information is and whether or not it is accurate. As an added measure, all sites recently built and those built in the future will link directly to this information, as well as tuition cost, deadlines for application, and financial aid. All sites with out of date or incorrect information have been contacted and the information/links changed.
•	Web.gc.cuny.edu and www.gc.cuny.edu domain names (now used to maintain separate GC main page and other program and office websites) should be combined into single www.gc.cuny.edu domain name and server for all GC websites.
•	Establish a uniform URL naming convention for all GC websites, using the same URL structure throughout.
•	Use of Microsoft FrontPage web editor should be eliminated for creating and updating all GC sites and sites that were built in FP should be ported over to HTML or DreamWeaver. Offices should be encouraged to use a simple and common web editing software product such as Contribute, which links directly to DreamWeaver; we also want to designate a default web editing software package (DreamWeaver seems to be the best candidate) for use throughout The Graduate Center for website design and development. Frontpage was eliminated during the GC-wide installation of the new Microsoft Office, which no longer offers the program or support for it.  In response to this change, copies of Dreamweaver and Contribute were offered as alternative web design/update programs. In addition, the CS3 (Creative Suite from Adobe which contains Dreamweaver and Contribute) was offered over the Citrix platform, giving remote and local access to the programs. Both group and one-on-one tutorials were also offered to help those that formerly utilized Frontpage transition to these new programs.   
•	A robust infrastructure must be established to serve as a foundation on which to build web-based applications and content.  We propose a comprehensive upgrade of the following key hardware and software components of our computing environment:
1.	core switches … to manage the critical network traffic necessary to accommodate the data flow.  Done.
2.	database,  applications and middleware servers … to house diverse industry-standard supported databases, software systems and programming necessary to provide database-driven web content Partially done; work ongoing.
3.	provision for web content management … to support the use of  standardized content updating software tools and utilities 
4.	web environments that comply with current standards … to enable us to take advantage of hosted services that broaden and enhance GC web content and technologies, and support the needs of web content currently managed externally
5.	web servers and content switching … to provide the load-balancing and redundancy necessary to ensure end users maintain appropriate access and response times 
6.	web management tools … to enable us to track, analyze and report on web traffic, user experiences and access patterns
7.	network storage … to provide the necessary capacity for web content and backing it up.  Procured, being configured.
8.	edge switches … configured, connected and managed in a fashion that ensures adequate and reliable throughput for access to web-based resources by internal users at the GC.  Procured, being installed.   
9.	network access control … to provide the authentication necessary to support role-based web applications   
10.	necessary network and web foundations … to position us to implement technologies such as portal environments, content management systems and single sign-on when their implementation is most appropriate
11.	robust network and web infrastructure … to provide for meaningful business continuity and disaster recovery implementations 

Policies, Procedures and Structure
•	Establish a GC Web Advisory Committee, reporting to the V.P. for I.T., which will establish and review web standards and arbitrate design and updating issues and problems to help guide the work of the various offices responsible for GC web design, training and production. The Web Advisory Committee, appointed by the President, should include: three faculty and three student representatives, drawn from each of the discipline clusters; representatives of the offices of the Provost, V.P. for Development, Student Affairs, the Library, and Information Technology; a Research Center or Institute representative. The Web Advisory Committee should also include all of the full-time web designer/developers/support specialists we plan to hire (see PERSONNEL section below) as ex-officio participants to help advise the committee.  COMMENTS: include Institutional Advancement, in particular, Media Relations; representatives from student affairs should include Admissions.  Steve Brier has now discharged the ad-hoc Web Planning Committee.
•	Establish timelines for implementing new guidelines, policies and processes. 

PERSONNEL 
	We have been developing and maintaining websites at The Graduate Center over the past five years with what can best be described as a skeleton crew. Overall, there are now three half-time web developers and designers: two are assigned to V.P. Brier’s office and work closely with the doctoral programs and administrative offices to redesign and update existing GC websites; the third part-time web person is assigned to the Public Affairs office and works closely with Barry Disman to maintain and improve the GC’s main homepage and numerous other pages.  The Information Technology organizational chart includes web-related technical staff positions, including web programmer and web systems support specialist positions, both of which have gone unfilled for almost a year. There is also a kind of hit-and-miss coordination of web activities among the various GC offices involved, with little sense of the functional responsibilities and lines of communication and authority for making broader policy decisions about the GC’s web presence. 

	For the GC to realize the inherent possibilities and opportunities provided by the Web requires not only a large commitment of financial resources for hardware and software acquisition but also a modest expansion of GC web personnel (including creating several new Web-related positions, expanding existing ones, and filling open IT positions that are web related) as well as creation of a GC web advisory and governance structure (described above). Both are essential if we are to realize the array of new technology initiatives that the committee is proposing. The enhanced GC web team will thus include:
•	A new full-time webmaster, assigned to the V.P. for I.T.’s office, to coordinate the work of all of the web design and development teams across various GC offices, including the two part-time web developers currently working in V.P.’s office.  This position is not presently funded.  COMMENTS: the justification for this position must make clear the expected positive impact on student recruitment, donor engagement and other anticipated affirmative outcomes.
•	Expansion from part time to full time of the web designer position currently in the Office of Public Affairs, currently supervised by Barry Disman, who is responsible for enhancing and upgrading the GC Main page.
•	A new web programmer, assigned to the Applications Development department in I.T., to build backend databases, “middleware,” and applications that will link GC’s data repositories to our web interfaces; this new position supplements the existing (and still open) positions in IT, each of which has a major impact on GC web capabilities.  Done.

PROPOSED BUDGET
	Per the recommendations above, The Graduate Center will have to identify additional funding to hire the new full-time webmaster assigned to the V.P. for I.T.’s office, as well as funds to expand the half-time web person in the Public Affairs office to a full time web designer position. The two current part-time student web designers in V.P. Brier’s office should be continued. And, in addition to filling long vacant web-related positions in Information Technology, IT also needs to hire an additional web programmer. We estimate that this expanded web staff, including the hiring of two new full-time web staff and the expansion of an existing part-time line to full-time, will require approximately $160,000 in additional PS funds annually, assuming we can hire full-time staff in the $60-65,000 a year range. 

Hardware and software costs to undertake the extensive redesign and reconfiguration of the GC’s web presence described above (which could cost upwards of $300,000-$400,000) can and will be paid for out of the recent $1 million capital appropriation for Information Technology that the City Council awarded The Graduate Center in the current fiscal year.