Currently all departmental pages are presented individually on the Kenyon site, with no “division”-style groupings.
This makes sense for Kenyon’s departments in general, but the sciences are in a unique and interesting situation. On the one hand, they suffer from a somewhat reduced visibility, given Kenyon’s status as a powerhouse of creative writing, English and the humanities. At the same time— and this is perhaps related— Kenyon’s science departments have forged a fascinating, and largely unique, sense of partnership. There are few boundaries between departments, and a great deal of cross-departmental collaboration among faculty and students alike.
With this in mind, we propose that the new Kenyon design and information architecture include a special home page for all the science departments. This cross-departmental home page probably wouldn’t have subpages— rather, it would just link directly to all the science department sites (which would have their own homepages). But it could be a clearinghouse for all science-related Kenyon news, and it could convey a sense of this collaborative model. And if desired, the sciences home page might have its own blog, or all science departments might share a single departmental blog (see our “Departmental blogs” recommendation for more information).
The issue of reduced visibility of science education at Kenyon was raised at least twice during our Kenyon visit, by faculty as well as departmental administrators. Clearly there’s a concern that Kenyon’s strength in English and the humanities risks overwhelming its science offerings.
A conventional way to address that concern would be to include language about the sciences in all messaging, and ensure that links to scientific offerings be prominent throughout information architecture. However, the last meeting of our Kenyon visit, with two members of Kenyon’s science faculty, suggested a much more interesting approach.
It was in fact the faculty we spoke with (Harry Itagaki, a sensory neurobiologist, and Jamie Keller, who works in laser spectroscopy) who proposed this idea. Harry and Jamie both expressed the same sentiment: that working in the sciences at Kenyon is a more collaborative and cross-disciplinary experience than you’d get at almost any other college or university.
They thought a home page for the sciences would be a good way to express this, and we agree: this approach has the potential to suggest that in fact, Kenyon’s strength in the humanities is directly related to its unique strength in the sciences, and that it all adds up to an approach to collaboration and partnership that can only be found here.
There are a few issues to be resolved before we can move forward on this idea.
1. First of all, are there any other cross-departmental groups that might request or push for similar treatment? The impression we got from Jamie and Harry is that departments outside the sciences operate more individually, and that this treatment wouldn’t be appropriate or desired outside the sciences. Let’s find out if that’s true. If we do in fact learn that, say, the “arts” departments considered themselves a similar unit, we might extend that approach to more groupings than just the sciences.
2. Would there be any science departments who wouldn’t be friendly to such an idea?
3. We believe the content of this “The Sciences at Kenyon” page wouldn’t need a great deal of management: it will have some basic text about the collaborative model, and feeds for news and events from all science departments. So it shouldn’t create any new content management challenges. However, it’s probably smart to plan for someone— either in Patty’s office, or from the science departments— to function as the owner of that page’s content.
Published with Backpack. This page is subject to the terms of service.