Beginning in the Fall of 2012, the CAS Newsletter web site has a new look!
CAS NEWS will feature stories about CAS faculty, students, and alumni throughout the year, updating on an almost daily basis. The site will also carry new extras–podcasts, interviews with faculty, book, music, and film recommendations, photos from around campus, and more.
The goal is to make the web site into a vehicle for CAS to tell its story, and to make the web site a place that viewers will want to return to, where they can find new ideas and insights into the many topics and activities that take place on the UP campus.
The “Highlights” section will display recent highlighted news and events from the College of Arts and Sciences. Below that, the “Recommendations” section opens to lists of books, music, film, etc. suggested by CAS faculty. Beneath that, the “News by Topic” listing allows users to find stories based on departments and programs, or by broader categories such as Faculty, Students, or Alumni.
“Focus on . . .” will host interdisciplinary topics that reach beyond a single department, connecting students, faculty, and alumni across campus, and out into the greater Portland community and the world beyond. These features will represent the central mission of the College of Arts and Sciences–to educate the Head, Heart, and Hands in order to bring about a new understanding of our world.
“Profiles” will feature Faculty, Staff, Students, and Alunni who have interesting stories to tell, highlighting moments of personal discovery, growth, and insight.
The new CAS podcast, “Speaking UP,” will feature discussions by faculty of their classes and research projects, interviews with guest speakers on campus, and reflections by alumni. The podcasts can be listened to on the CAS NEWS site, or downloaded for listening to later on a mobile device.
The “Photo Galleries” section also will feature many of the unique arts and events that take place on the UP campus–both now and in the past. One of the gallery exhibits features Presidential campaign memorabilia from the UP campus, including visits to campus by presidential aspirants such as John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.
The change in the web site is part of a new approach to telling CAS stories implemented by Mark Eifler, who became the new Assistant to the Dean for Communications this past summer. Eifler envisions the podcasts and other content on the web as going beyond simply telling the news, and providing faculty, students, alumni, and others interested in the activities at UP with interesting stories that they will want to revisit.
“The stories can be extensions of what we do here on the Bluff,” Eifler noted. “Especially for alumni, I’m hoping that the site can be like a virtual visit to campus, a chance to sit in on a discussion by a favorite professor, or to see the progress of CAS activities over the years.”