March 2023 Website Meeting

Notes

National Public Health Week on the site

We began our meeting with a reminder from Nikky that National Public Health Week (NPHW) is coming up. As of the meeting, she has been planning on re-using the existing NPHW pages for the event, and just updating the content rather than bother with the new Events module. Dan believes that Shawn would likely prefer that the new Events module be used at a minimum, or possibly in conjunction with the already existing NPHW pages. Nikky is concerned about having the event information in two locations and people becoming confused. Ultimately, this will need to be discussed with Shawn on his return for us to figure out the best path forward. Regardless, Nikky will begin updating the information with what she has soon, and then we can pivot to another solution if need be.

Community partners resource

A popular feature on the Public Health website seems to be the Research Experts Database, as Nikky mentioned that other groups from the school have expressed interest in having a similar tool developed for them. Last semester, people from the Academic & Student Affairs team discussed having a similar solution developed for the school’s alumni.

Earlier this week, Nikky was in a meeting where another project was proposed that used the Experts Database as inspiration. The same Academic & Student Affairs team are interested in having a similar resource developed for the school’s community partners. The proposed tool would ultimately be used to help facilitate communication between these partnering organizations and students, as students are expected to find organizations to work with as part of their studies. This would also serve as a good resource to market how the school works with these organizations throughout the community.

Nikky mentioned that it might be necessary to have both an inward- and an outward-facing pieces to this tool, as some of the details the system would need to keep track of would not be appropriate for public display. She also mentioned a spreadsheet that contained a comprehensive list of the community partners the school currently has, which could be used as a starting point for this proposed solution. Building out this project would help stop the “badgering” that is so often associated with trying to track down such a list of the partnering organizations. Apparently, a makeshift solution is already in place in SOLE, but is clunky and inefficient. Beyond having just a list of these partnering organizations and their details, Nikky did mention possibly having some kind of map component, though such a piece would need to not just focus on West Virginia, as the school has partnering organizations throughout the country. She specifically mentioned some oil and gas companies the school has worked with that are out-of-state.

Rachel wondered if students would be contributing content to this tool, because if that were the case SOLE might be a better solution, but Nikky didn’t believe that students would be involved in such a way. They would use it as a method of looking up organizations they could potentially work with or for.

All of these partnerships are put in place with formal agreements or contracts. Those agreements only last for a specified length of time, so the relationships between the school and organizations do expire after a while. That doesn’t seem to necessarily mean that the school won’t work with that organization again, but it does mean that if a student does want to work with that org. it might take extra time for a formal agreement to be drawn up, and is something the tool could highlight or warn about.

As stated, Audra with the Academic and Student Affairs Office has already shared with Nikky a spreadsheet with current partners and their details listed, but there will be additional details that Nikky will want to include in whatever is developed for the site. As a starting point for this project, Jason suggested creating a list of those data points that could be provided to the web team so that a clearer picture of the scope of the tool could be developed. This will of course need to be discussed with Shawn, who was not available to be a part of this meeting.

Newsroom update

Nikky asked if there was any update in the Newsroom project, the system that will eventually replace SOLE News. Dan says that the project is coming along, and that the programmer that he and the web team have been working with is pretty deep within the project. He also mentions that the system is being built from the ground up and will not be based on SOLE, like other similar systems are. There is no timeline on Newsroom, but it is actively being built. Nikky asked if the school was still on track to be one of the groups to get early access and help test the new system, and Dan assured her that that was still the plan. He actually expects early testing of the system to begin in the next month or two.

Tattoos and moving

Finally, we finished the meeting with some discussions around Nikky’s new tattoo on her wrist, and the joys of moving.