Princeton Theological Seminary Departmental Websites
September 10, 2007
During my first year of seminary, I did some webdesign work for the seminary. One thing I did was create the website for the Practical Theology Department. I know it’s not a great website anymore - and I’d like to think my design skills have improved since then. But, compared to our other three departmental sites (Theology, Religion & Society and Biblical Studies) - it’s not too bad.
Anyway, I have a meeting tomorrow to discuss the Practical Theology Department website. Does anyone have any comments, critiques or thoughts on that site - or the other departmental sites?
One thing I found interesting as I was working on writing up a critique of the site, was simply the fact that we have separate “websites” for each of the departments. In looking at every other PC(USA) seminary, and some other seminaries and divinity schools, the departments are not broken up like that - they are not separated. In some ways, this makes sense because many have critiqued the Academic Departments here at the seminary of being too separate (purposely so) from each other; some have said there isn’t enough collaboration between different departments - in fact, there is probably some competition. Anyway - let me know if you have any ideas.
Tags: Practical-Theology, Princeton-Theological-Seminary, Web-Critique, Webdesign
Posted in Design
Adam Walker Cleaveland: I am a 28 yr old 
September 10th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
I think you bring up an excellent point. Why isn’t there more continuity between the different sites? It definitely makes a point (whether intentional or not) that the seminary is splintered. Is it apparent who’s “in charge” of web design at PTSEM, or does each department have a point person? If I were you, I’d find them (whether it is one person or many) and build a case for redesigning the entire site. You know what you are doing, you are a good web designer, plus you have the advantage of having graduated from there. I think you’d be ale to do a kick butt job. Why not? Good luck.
September 10th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
Wow. They do suck. Yours is the most visually pleasing of the lot, but all seem to be caught in a static world of the past. At least they don’t say “Welcome to our Homepage” across the top, with a gray background and blinking font.
I don’t think there needs to be absolute uniformity of design among the departments. The trick is to find a way for them to be “stylistically” linked, (logo, color scheme, etc) but each reflecting the unique flavor of the department it represents. Content and content management should be different for each out of necessity.
Hmmm…would the phrase “departmental wiki” just be waaaay too out there?
Of course, the fear here is that perhaps the current state of the pages actually DOES reflect the philosophy of the departments??? (i.e. we’re stuck in the past) I hope not, but wouldn’t be totally surprised if that’s the case.
Which is why I’m definitely not going to PTS in order to “prepare myself for ministry.” I’m going for the community. For the monastic experience. For the relationships. And I’ll keep telling myself that…
September 10th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
adam, i’m thinking more and more that static websites are a thing of the past… it is much more helpful to have a blog format, or at least an rss feed so that the content can be published and sent to me. i don’t have time to check in on pts (or any other site) a couple of times a week and see if there is something new.
i’m pondering completely moving my church website (www.gspc.net) to a blog… there can be ’static’ pages set up at the beginning or on a sister site (gspc1) for links to staff and such… but then have the main page be all the content that gets updated so people can have it come to them.
that’s the design piece i’ve been telling people lately, especially since i discovered google reader.
rma
September 10th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
A few comments:
(1) PTS is huge, so I think department pages are fine. Most PCUSA seminaries are a dozen faculty members, which is about the size of each department. The websites should list faculty members, institutes/centers, doctoral candidates, major lectures, etc.
(2) Web pages have a BAD history of being maintained for departments. I know at least three PhD students who have created a History page over the last 6-7 years, and not one of them has made it up onto the website. I understand this is partly because there is a huge lagtime on this, and some admin vetting. Why is this?
(3) I would propose standardization of the department pages, except I fear it would halt any progress on getting sites up where they can be of use.
September 11th, 2007 at 9:22 am
The separate site may be sending the wrong message, but they do give one advantage: Multi-siting for a large organization increases their relevance in search engine logarithms. Engines like Google count how many quality sites link to your site. If each department has a significantly different URL and yet link together, they will help each other’s ratings.
I think RSS feeds are a great idea. It would also be a way for departments to share news and content across sites for additional coverage.
September 11th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
I can tell you were dating Katie at the time;-)
September 11th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
You did a nice job….
Except for individual faculty pages there aren’t pictures of either students or faculty (actually there are 2 or so in the “Other areas” links). Although, apparently the crosses seem to be working given the size.
Two dead links to the building bridges project on the lefthand sidebar.
I like the idea of adding a blog that all the profs could post info on or blog with an announcements area. The folks at Public Square, who Justin covered at Web-Strategist.com, within the last couple days have a nice newspaper like setup. Although, wordpress or drupal may offer a better option. The free version of Public square might be decent for student publications, however (presumably students could set up feeds from their individual blogs)
If any of the profs had blogs, it would be sweet to not have to goto that professor’s individual page to find out. (ie one central area with RSS links or even all the feeds together)
If you really want to goto the next level with vide, the communication department at Georgia State has 1-1:30 minute features with professors that want to post a personal video and invitation for students to attend. (some are good and some are only ok) For folks that can’t fly to Princeton Theological Seminary to visit the campus, its a good way to get a glimpse into the minds and personalities of professors. It would certainly add a personal flavor to the site.
If I knew what other departments at other top seminaries looked like I think I would be in a better position to comment.
Best of luck & God bless…
September 12th, 2007 at 12:30 am
Thanks, Adam, for taking this on. I’m not convinced that the diversity in website layout is a matter of intra-institutional division. In fact, I’m not sure that many of the faculty members give much thought to their internet presence at all. I would be more quick to attribute the differences in layout to a lack of administrative planning. But hey-who knows. Bottom line: the whole website needs a massive overhaul. As a student, one thing that I would like to see is the integration of webmail, Blackboard, library databases, TE Web, etc.
September 12th, 2007 at 12:32 am
Adam, good comments. The most integrated thing we have around here is Iainslist…
September 15th, 2007 at 9:03 am
I have very little to do with the web as a whole, but once school starts back up, the “Web Vision Committee” has student representation, so that would be the channel to get your concerns in the hopper.
Integration is where I do work quite a bit, and I have to say, integrating various third party applications is not trivial. In my defense, at least it’s all the same username and password across the board, which is the “old school” “single sign-on” idea, which many places are still struggling with. The more modern interpretation of “single sign-on” is sign in once and have access to everything, which we get closer and closer to. This year, with the new portal, TEWeb is gone, all of the previous TEWeb functions are now integrated natively into the portal. Soon, hopefully, I’ll have the pass-through authentication working for email, so if you log into the portal, you can pass straight through to webmail without logging in again, but the priority presently for me is making sure all the current stuff is at least functional and doesn’t blow up.