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Faculty raise concerns about new website content, functionality: 'It's been bungled from the top down'
President Bob Davies (left) gives an opening statement to introduce a panel of deans Nov. 23, 2021 in the French Auditorium. The panel gave details on the marquee prioritization process and answered questions from senators.
Central Michigan University’s new website launch has been met with criticism from faculty, staff and students for problems with its content and functionality.
At the Jan. 18 Academic Senate meeting, several faculty voiced concerns with the website. Missing information and crashing were two highlighted issues. A major concern from faculty was miscommunication during the site’s development. Some faculty said they were not involved enough in the website's creation.
“In a time of dwindling enrollment, this is a slip-up we cannot afford,” Senator John Allen said at the meeting. “It is a woefully underprepared website and I think the students have recognized this.”
According to Vice President for Marketing and Communication John Veilleux, there were about 20,000 pages on the old website - 7,000 have been included on the new website. Veilleux said content decisions were made by departments and colleges.
Colleges and departments chose their own website collaborators, Veilleux said, to collect and design web content. There are 250 of these trained collaborators across campus. He said the collaborators worked with faculty to determine what content needed to appear on the new site. They would then send the information to one of the four people working on Veilleux’s development team.
Despite some faculty saying they were not allowed involvement in the process, Veilleux said website collaborators worked with faculty.
“We have sent out communications to the major collaborators to inform their people,” Veilleux said. “They should be coordinating and that should be happening at the department and college level. Our team has sent out communications to 100 percent of faculty and 100 percent of staff that provides the instructions on what to do.
"I presume all of those folks are talking. I mean, that’s what they should be doing.”
Senator Allen said his colleagues on the College of Science and Engineering Communications Committee were not asked to submit content.
Senator Martha Frank said there is no information for new mathematics graduate students.
“I don’t know anybody in the graduate committee that was allowed to have any input on what went on the math department page,” Frank said during the senate meeting. “We can’t wait for these fixes. This seems like it’s been bungled from the top down here. I am very frustrated.”
Frank submitted about six pages of her concerns before the meeting. She said the lack of information about mathematics graduate programs will hurt graduate enrollment. She also said when searching for the word 'math,' results for a math program showed up fifth in line, behind economics and finance programs.
At the senate meeting, Veilleux also said the site crashes “quite frequently and quite regularly.” He said an unknown issue has caused instability in the website when staff tries to make changes to it.
“It’s highly frustrating for me and our team that we’re not able to serve these people because we want people to have the pages that we want,” Veilleux said. “We know it’s a great website and we know it’s a great platform, but we’re not understanding the technical issue that’s going on.”
Before the website went public, Veilleux said it was moved onto a private server to test its functionality. Everything was working during testing, he said, but issues appeared after the launch.
Some senators questioned whether the site was ready to be published.
“We absolutely felt it was ready,” Veilleux said. “This is what happens when you go to a live environment. You can’t predict what’s going to happen.”
The website’s algorithm will continue adapting to recognize more relevant search results, Veilleux said. Combined with edits made by the technical teams, he said the website will get better as time passes.
The criticism the website and its design team have received from faculty and students is misplaced, Veilleux said.
“I don’t think it falls on leadership,” Veilleux said. “I don’t think it falls on any one thing. I think it falls on the nature of these massive projects. We’re going to be building and optimizing this website for the next 20 years, like the previous website.
"I knew this was a part of the project and I knew it was going to be a big project. I embrace that responsibility. I’m glad people are sharing their feedback; send it my way.”
Contact Veilleux at veill1jm@cmich.edu
