When the new www.middlebury.edu site was launched, with a new look and new features to support the activity of the College, we sifted through the many good ideas people had for improving our old website, and kept a running list of possible projects and improvements, which you will find here: go.middlebury.edu/web/projects. We are now turning our attention to that list. The new platform has also changed how our community thinks about the web, generating even more ideas. To make decisions about how we use the web to educate, communicate and run the business of the College, we need to engage in thoughtful planning that includes the perspective of all areas of the College.

To that end, we have formed a new group, the Web Prioritization Committee, that will look at medium-sized web programming projects to make sure we use our staffing and technology resources in ways that best serve the mission of the College.

The members of the committee are:

Joe Antonioli (Co-Chair), LIS Web & Interactive Media
LeRoy Graham (Co-Chair), Registrar’s Office
Bill Burger, Communications
Doug Adams, Center for Campus Activities & Leadership
Dana Barrow, Education in Action
Greg Buckles, Admissions
Aline Germain-Rutherford, Language Schools
Rebekah Irwin, LIS Collections and Digital Initiatives
David Kauchak, Faculty
David Ludwig, LIS Administrative Systems
Amy McGill, Monterey Institute of International Studies
Sarah McGowen, Academic Administration
Maggie Paine, College Advancement
Will Potter, SGA Junior Class Senator
Mike Roy, Library and Information Services
Susan Simmons, Budget Office
Catherine Tester, Staff
Kaveh Waddell, SGA Director of Technology
Rebecca Walters, Monterey Institute of International Studies

Once a month, this group will meet to look at project requests and evaluate them on the following criteria:

• Does this help serve the academic mission? (teaching and learning)
• How many people will be served by this? Is the technology reusable? Are there other departments that could, and should, use this? (all members of the campus community and beyond vs. one department)
• How much time will it take to accomplish this? (One week or 18 months)
• Are there other non-personnel expenses associated with this? (licenses, servers, training, etc.)
• How hard will it be to support this on an on-going basis? Does it require deep technical knowledge? Will the solution grow with our needs?
• Does it help promote administrative efficiency? Will it help members of the community to communicate? Will it save time? Will it remove complex paper-based processes? Does it keep us in compliance with the law or with campus policy?
• Can it help us recruit and retain the very best students?
• Can it help us raise money for the College more effectively?
• Will it increase revenue for the College?
• Have the appropriate departments been consulted?
• Does it help the College toward its goal of carbon neutrality?

Our process has changed as of this year.

Step 1

If you have an idea for a web project, please submit your idea here: go/web_ideas These ideas will be evaluated based on the criteria above. The Web Prioritization Committee meets once per month on the 4th Thursday, ideas must be submitted a week in advance to be evaluated at the next meeting:

Ideas that are accepted will go back to the functional area and the Web Application Development group for more details, and will require a completed project request form to be evaluated at the next WPC meeting.

We hope that this new process will ensure that we spend our time on the highest priority projects, and that the process itself will help us improve the College’s use of the web as a platform for accomplishing many of our ambitious goals.