Jonesboro, AR – (JonesboroRightNow.com) – Oct. 28, 2024 – Arkansas State University is in the process of redesigning its website.

A-State campus community members were invited to an open forum on the A-State campus, as Website Redesign Project Committee Co-Chairs Todd Clark and Melanie Wicinski talked about the redesign, presented updates on the project and showed protypes for the new site.

According to Clark, it was time for a redesign, as the lifespan for a university website is typically five to six years. The current website is 12 years old.

The plan is to make the new site more “student-focused” by making it easier to use, improving program pages, implementing more functionality and having more informative content, among others.

“The things that we were trying to accomplish with the overhaul is we want a website that’s student focused, that communicates our brand, it’s easy to use for our users and then easy to update for our people, like our staff, and they’re responsible for updating it,” Clark said.

He added that degree pages on the site will be updated, as current degree/program pages didn’t do a “great job” of selling the programs.

“We wanted students to be able to come and get all the information that they need before they even get here.” Clark said. “Here’s what you can do with the degree. Here’s how it’s going to change your future. Here’s some of the courses you’re going to take. And that’s what students want to know. They want to know; do you have the degree their interested in and what can they do with it? What will my life be like as a student? What kind of courses am I going to take? Who are the people? Who are the faculty that are going to be teaching me?”

Wicinski said that while they had been working on the project for about a year, they expect to have a blank site and training from Modern Campus by January and to go live by the Summer of 2025. Modern Campus is a software solutions company that specializes in helping higher education institutions to attract, engage, and retain students.

“We’ll be in a mad dash during the spring, she laughed.