Hello again,

I apologize for my second late blog post. I always make a note to do it Monday morning, and then I get caught up with work and it all goes out the window!

Last week was a pretty productive week. I was able to meet with Sher Fenn of Central Web Services and get both the calendar and the news feed up and running. Now the home page of the “OSU Marine Sciences” website looks a lot like the Oregon State home page! On Wednesday (I believe), I attended a meeting with members of Oregon Sea Grant to discuss the current state of funding as well as other projects that are going on. It was fun to be able to see the Sea Grant people from Hatfield on screen during the meeting!

I met with Jenna after the meeting and we discussed what has been done so far, and what remains to be done. We decided that it might be a good idea to add an “Opportunities” tab to the website where we can include research programs offered here at the university (such as the program we are all a part of). I dedicated the rest of the week (as well as this week) to getting in touch with students to potentially feature in the “student researchers” section of the site.

I never knew that emailing could take so much time!!! I spent the end of last week and the beginning of this week just sending emails. I contacted faculty members from all of the colleges and departments represented within the Marine Council, as well as other university representatives to inquire about outstanding undergraduate and graduate students that would be worth featuring on the website. I have created template emails, but I still have at least 100 emails out that I get responses to on a daily basis. Once I get student names, I contact those students (using another template email), and get their information and feature pictures. As I receive this information, I upload it to the website. Sometimes I have had to make edits to students’ text (sometimes people are in a hurry), but for the most part I think this has been an efficient means of going about it. If I rewrite the text myself, I have to get it approved by the student, and more often than not they have a lot of edits for me anyway. I figure it is best not to mix up the details. I just received an email from a faculty member today encouraging me to take a peek at the Marine Biology Option blog posts. Today I plan to check that out and email some of the students that have posted.

As I wait for replies to my emails, I am working on several things. I have been uploading video transcripts to the site (accessibility rules require that transcripts be provided for all embedded videos). I will also be working on the “opportunities” tab mentioned above. When Jenna gets back, I plan to meet with her again to show her my progress. Hopefully I can get all of the student features done this week and be able to move on to the “Academics” tab next week.

I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the sun (we haven’t gotten much sun yet this summer!)

Best of luck,

Shealyn