Spotlights

So, on the new website, we wrote tons of feature stories on students and alumni. We call them spotlights and you’ll see them featured throughout the site if you look. The reason we did all this work for the site relaunch was to showcase the student experience at the University.

I mean, don’t you read reviews before you buy something significant?

The biggest places these spotlights were showcased was on the program pages. At the top of 90% of them, you’ll find a student spotlight. There’s also alumni spotlights farther down on the page. Some pages even have quite a few alumni spotlights.

In all honesty, some programs didn’t have super cooperative students or alumni, though. So, some are missing these spotlights. I don’t believe that’s a reflection on the programs or anything, more so the things being taught in these programs as well as the strengths of the students.

You’ll find that the Strategic Communication program has quite a few alumni. We communication majors like to talk, surprise! Whereas a lot of the STEM students and alumni were a little more reserved even when we did get the chance to interview them.  That’s not to say they didn’t enjoy the program as much as communication students enjoyed theirs.

Rather, liberal arts students – and even art students – are taught to communicate, and they showcased that well. I’m sure the STEM students would do well showcasing the things their programs are teaching them (think more like science fair over book report).

Anyway, I went off on a little tangent there. I could delete it, but I just don’t really want to. 🙃

So, let’s get back to where I was going – this is a professional website, after all.

So, we (the web team) wrote all these spotlights, but that’s just the result of the entire process. A long process that tangles in with the process of building the program pages (I’ll probably do a separate blog post about those later).

First and foremost, we split up the list of programs among each member of the web team and we all went about things in slightly varied ways.

This is essentially what I did:

During the program page process, I coordinated a lot with the faculty and leadership in said programs. I poked them and prodded them and got lists of students and alumni that they thought would be good to showcase.

I sent a lot of emails.

Some people got back to me.

And then I interviewed a lot of people.

And I turned these interviews into full write-ups.

There were so many of these that this was the main focus of my job for quite a while. Here are some of my favorites:

• Public relations alum Myleeza Mingo learned to navigate two worlds as a student

  • She was really fun to talk to and her experiences were really cool to write about.

• Meet social media professional and public relations alum Kristyn Shay

  • I actually used to work with her at my internship! It was super cool to see how she’s been doing (she’s really a superstar).

• Meet reporter and documentarian Eman Boyd '19

  • This one was really cool to see such a local impact.

• Amy Oliver is using her communication degree at the Smithsonian Institution

  • I just realized that all of these have been communication alumni so far… 😬 I told you, communication majors like to talk! And they’re always super fun. I guess it’s just really cool for me to see all the ways a communication major can turn out.

• French major Camille Harrington's advice for new students

  • I structured this one differently and had a lot of fun writing it.

• Adam Ortego plans to make a difference with his architecture major

  • This one was a really fun interview. This student is also really involved all over campus, so you’ll see pictures of him frequently on the website.