Shelly Vitanza:
Welcome to the LU Moment. Thank you for listening. I’m Shelly Vitanza, the Director of Public Affairs at Lamar University. Each week we showcase the great events, activities, programs, projects, and people at Lamar University. It has been a pretty busy week at Lamar University. Students began Spring semester, we awarded an MLK scholarship and we launched a new COVID-19 testing site on the LU campus. We expect a very busy semester, through the pandemic, enrollment at LU has risen to more than 17,000 students and that’s really due to our robust online program.
You could say, our success dealing with natural disasters like hurricanes kind of has a silver lining because we were forced to prepare and build this robust online program, so when the entire world went from face to face to a virtual setting in March 2020, Lamar University was really ready for that. For that reason, more students joined our online program.
So, we now have students from 48 states and 17 countries. That’s good stuff. Yours truly is now taking some online programs towards a master’s in English and let me tell you, it is pretty awesome. You know, I’m a little bit older. I haven’t been to school in a long time and never been online, but I was able to watch lectures and comment on a blog and get to know my classmates all online. It’s an amazing world out there and it’s exciting to be a student and continue in the midst of a global pandemic to continue their education.
This week, we also celebrate the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., not only did we award a $500 scholarship to a student who lived a life of love and kindness while pursuing her dream, but we also did a day of service in commemoration of Dr. Kings commitment to service to others. Students met at the Southeast Texas food bank and helped out.
What I love about this is, we initially had one slot and limited spaces allowing for social distancing, but we had to expand and make it an entire day, still limiting, of course social distancing but so many students wanted to participate, we had to expand our offerings for that day of service. That just goes to show how selfless our young people here at Lamar University are and we’re very proud of them for that. The other big thing on our campus this week is the COVID-19 testing kiosk that was installed on the parking lot of the Montagne Center. It’s for anyone to go and be tested, students, faculty members, staff, all people within the community are invited to make an appointment at lamar.edu/covidtesting. Make that appointment and you can go and be tested. But if you have symptoms, go online to lamar.edu/covidtesting and you’ll see all the details, what to do, what not to do, and it’s free, I don’t think I mentioned that. It is free.
There is no cost. You bring your driver’s license and or insurance card and COVID-19 testing free. So, check that out. We’re trying to make COVID-19 testing more accessible and less taxing for our healthcare workers across southeast Texas. You might think that during this pandemic, not much has happened here at Lamar University but that’s just not the case. When faculty and staff were all working from home March through July, things still happened. Not only were we educating students, but we managed to build a new Welcome Center which will be opening early in the Spring. It’s absolutely beautiful.
It will complete Lamar University’s new front door, the first official front door that Lamar University has ever had. It’s right off Cardinal Drive. We can talk more about
that this Spring and it’s. In addition, we’ve done a lot of internal remodeling and rebuilding, mainly our website and we’re building a mobile app. Here to talk about that are members of Lamar University’s communications team, Charla Pate, the Director of the Web Communications in the Marketing Department and Stacey Haynes, the University Web Editor. You cover the universe at Lamar University, web editing, right? These are some of my coworkers. Thanks for being here. Charla, let’s start with you. How’d you get to Lamar? Give us a little bit of background, how’d you come to speak in code. I graduated from Lamar University way back when.
Shelly Vitanza:
I love when we hire our own. That’s awesome.
Charla Pate:
I worked in a lot of different aspects of technology. I worked in doing a tax website when I worked for tax accreditation and then I moved over as director of web communications under marketing. For 27 years.
Shelly Vitanza:
27 years.
Charla Pate:
Long time. I graduated with my bachelor’s and master’s from Lamar.
Shelly Vitanza:
That’s amazing. That’s great. Glad to have you. You’ve been remodeling the websites. Your whole team has, but you also have been working on the mobile app, so let’s look at some of the goals and what you guys are trying to do.
Charla Pate:
Well, we’re trying to get easier access to register, pay, look at the campus map through the mobile app just to make it easier.
Shelly Vitanza:
Got it. And long-term projects? Where do we stand with the timeline?
Charla Pate:
The app is available in the Apple Store now. If you search for Lamar University, you can download it. We also have an android version that we’re working on. We should have it out by the end of the semester.
Shelly Vitanza:
Okay, so what all can you do on this app? What are some of the main features?
Charla Pate:
You can register and pay for your classes and see your courses and where they are. You can access the map. Social media links are there.
Shelly Vitanza:
That’s amazing. That’s great. And we’re starting to promote that to students. I mean, it’s brand new, right?
Charla Pate:
Right. It is.
Shelly Vitanza:
Anyone can download it?
Charla Pate:
Anyone can download it?
Shelly Vitanza:
The Lamar University app. That’s what it’s called. Stacey, you have been, ever since I got here for two years, you’ve been remodeling the website?
Stacey Haynes:
Yeah, It’s a huge project and it’s overdue. We’re super excited about it. I’m going to say that everybody uses their phones, and they use their mobile devices and it’s important to have a website that was user friendly and what we call mobile first. So, when you pick up that phone and you go to lamar.edu, all of the pages, the content comes up and it’s very easy to read on your phone. You’re not going to have trouble finding things, it’s very accessible and this is the way things keep moving. I mean, we’re all doing it this way. The redesign of the website was a huge project when you think about all the offices, departments, and colleges here have had to do their thing on the web. Now that we’re doing so much online, it’s super important that we get this rolled out and it’s a big project.
Shelly Vitanza:
One other thing is that I’ve been amazed at coming to Lamar is how many people, how many different departments, have their own access to the web. It’s great but it’s also a challenge because people will go in and load things that don’t work and you’ve got to police that. Can you talk about any other policies in place? How do you manage all of these faculty members? Got to love our faculty, but they think that they can upload their research or their whatever and it can show up. So, what do you do?
Stacey Haynes:
Part of my job as user content manager here at Lamar is to allow so many departments whether you have experience or not, you can go in and update your webpages, which is important to keep everything current.
Shelly Vitanza:
Right, you want it to be dynamic.
Stacey Haynes:
Right so when we used that system, the system comes to us as software that you have to build up. It’s my job to build up a template so when they come in, everything’s done, written and programmed for them, for everything to appear correctly, to display correctly, to size on mobile devices. Obviously, they need help along the way, and that’s what our office does. People can pick up the phone and we help them as quickly and as efficiently as we can. We all work together to make it happen, but that system is very helpful for keeping everything consistent, under every single department. They all function the same, they have a very similar look and feel, very Lamar University. And the content again comes up on a mobile device beautifully in my opinion.
Shelly Vitanza:
So, when did this project begin? It’s good to have humor, be able to laugh about these things.
Stacey Haynes:
Web is such a big thing. It’s a beast!
Shelly Vitanza:
Right, yeah.
Stacey Haynes:
There’s so many pages, the University’s has a very large web department and ours is very small.
Shelly Vitanza:
How many are in our department?
Stacey Haynes:
Four people right now. Yeah it’s a very small department and so we all work so well together and it’s super. I mean, we just love our jobs, so it’s so enjoyable, but it’s very time consuming. So, I suppose we’ve been working on this project for probably the last two years.
Shelly Vitanza:
I was going to say, ever since I came here a few years ago in January, this has been in the work. Did you even know how many pages?
Charla Pate:
Over 6,000 pages.
Shelly Vitanza:
That’s a lot of pages and four people are responsible for it.
Stacey Haynes:
We’re hoping to clean up and scale back on some of that.
Shelly Vitanza:
But at the same time, your adding things to the community relations section. I mean, your adding pages as well.
Stacey Haynes:
And Stacey has to build the framework and she builds the framework all back in and that takes an enormous amount of time.
Shelly Vitanza:
And that’s what’s so important to because I know I get into the back end. I have no technical skills, coding skills, none of that. I can go in there and add content and it pops up and it looks perfect and it’s because of what you do from that back end.
Stacey Haynes:
It’s a wonderful system. I’ve worked at several different content management systems and this is by far my favorite because it just allows for so much creativity and when somebody sits at the phone and says, “Hey. I need to do this. I need to make this happen on my site, the system is so open and you’re free to really to build that out for a department or a college and make it happen.
Shelly Vitanza:
Well, and I think it’s important. We want people when they come here in person, to feel welcome and invited and warm and friendly and fuzzy feelings or whatever. The website’s important too because it’s like for these students who are prospective students from out of town, that’s their first contact with Lamar University, not to put the pressure on you.
Stacey Haynes:
Yeah! It’s a major marketing tool! That’s where we all go really. Let me jump online, let me go to that website. I mean, that’s how we’re living our lives right now is online.
Shelly Vitanza:
So, what do you want people to take away from when they use the website and the app? What do you hope your experience is?
Stacey Haynes:
I hope it’s easy and intuitive and I hope they get to what they need easily and get the job done. Find the information they need fast. Being able to do that is why we have the website.
Charla Pate:
We certainly don’t want people struggling to find information. We want things to be simple and to the point and find it quickly and get what they need and get out.
Shelly Vitanza:
Well, I’m just going to highlight some of my favorites on the web: The map. I love the map. If someone tells me I need to be at Maes building at a certain time, I have no idea where the Maes building is, I go and type in Maes, and it comes up. It shows me where I am, where I need to go and it’s perfect. So that’s one of my favorite tools. The directory. I’m constantly having to look up a professor or a staff member or something like that. I can type in “John” and all the Johns will come up and I can pick the person. I forgot what it’s called but you can go in and take a little questionnaire. You can find out what major would be best suited for you. What is that called?
Stacey Haynes:
It’s the degree quiz.
Shelly Vitanza:
Yeah and I think that is so valuable, so you really added a lot. People need to go check out lamar.edu and then we also need to go to the Apple app store and search for Lamar University and download the app. That’s great. Alright. This things going to wrap up here probably in the next year?
Charla Pate:
Absolutely! We are chugging away at it. We’re making good progress.
Shelly Vitanza:
Alright. You guys go check that out. Let’s let everybody out there know we have something very special going on at Lamar University campus January 25th-29th. It is an international Holocaust Remembrance Day exhibit, Portraits of Survival. This is going to be on the first floor of our Mary and John Gray Library. Everybody’s invited from 8am to 5pm. come check it out at the library. It’s going to be great. Thanks for listening to the LU Moment. We really appreciate it. I’m Shelly Vitanza, the Director of Public Affairs at Lamar University, the pride of southeast Texas.