By: Jessica Linczak

When you applied to The University of Akron, where did you get information about applying?  How about when you got accepted into the college of your choice and wanted to access information about the college – where did you go for that information? Then there are those of you who are graduating at the end of the semester – how did you end up applying for graduation?

All of these questions have one common answer – The University of Akron’s website.

The university’s website is the hub of all information.  And it should be, considering we have thousands of students coming in and out of campus on a daily basis.  Our school’s website has been updated a lot in the last few months.  Out with the old, and in with the new.

The problem concerning the website was that there were (and still are) numerous web pages associated with our university’s site.  It needed to be cleaned up and updated in a big way.  There were pages associated with colleges that were years old and had information that didn’t even apply to that school anymore.

Teachers’ names from years past who were no longer employed or held a different position had contact information up that didn’t exist anymore.  What would have happened if a prospective UA student decided to call a department to get more information about the program he/she was interested in and then found out he/she couldn’t contact the department because of an outdated phone number or email?  Embarrassing…

Our website needed a cleanup, and I’m glad (and somewhat surprised) that this happened.  It seemed like our website sat dormant for a long time, like it was waiting for just the right person to come along and spruce it up.  Well, apparently that person did come along.

Websites for specific UA programs are more modern and accessible.  Though, there are some webpages that I need to access but end up typing it into the search bar to bypass all the webpages of information you have to click through to get to it.  That is one negative aspect that still needs to be fixed.  Sometimes our searches in the search bar just don’t come up with the information we are looking for.

The website doesn’t pose an easy access right away.  Though it is more accessible today than in years past, it could still use some cleaning up, considering how many pages are currently out there, floating in cyber space.  However, creating and maintaining a large website for a large school is probably not the easiest task, or the most lovable.  Just think about it.

Think about all the college websites you’ve coursed through when starting your college experience.  Did you ever come across multiple websites that were pristinely perfect and organized?  I haven’t.  Maybe a couple here and there, but most college websites are not the greatest representation of being organized, professional and visually stimulating.

But our school deserves credit.  It recognized a problem and is striving to fix it to better the student population.  At least now, I can easily access tuition rates to see if they went up for next semester…