Robert Denton

Staggering work of genius from Portland, Maine – Gardener, Photographer, Designer, Taco Maker, Birder, Biker, Wine Merchant

New Student Gateway at Bowdoin (built by a student!)

Bowdoin College has incredible students and resources for them. In late spring the student it-cio advisory council committed to building a real portal like page for students to use — you know, one that’d be comparable to what you can get at Yahoo, Google, and many more places!

The basic requirements/goals were: customizable and personalized content, easier navigation to very top resources, a channel for official college announcements. I asked Mark Hendrickson ’07 (creator of several other small sites and a great db/web site for tracking and publishing a directory of student organizations on campus!) if he wanted to work on this. He casually said yes and really ran with the idea.

Mark and I met a few times to outline the very top view of this project. He is responsible for the rest of the execution and design and he did a knockout job. Mark wrote all of the behavior routines for the site and created the overall look within the new standard gateway style Bowdoin template.

It’s been more than a few years that we’ve been building our information sources on campus with web services in mind. Consuming various and discreet content from around the Bowdoin campus is easy to do with the RSS feeds we provide. Mark did have to wrangle some content not yet provided in an RSS feed but those were minimal.

More content is planned for the gateway to round out some old ideas born new, and some good ideas never executed. Stay tuned, Mark is with us throughout this academic year.

Visit the new Bowdoin Student Gateway

Posted: 28.09.2006 in Design, GeneralTagged , , Both comments and pings are currently closed. — RSS 2.0

One Response to “New Student Gateway at Bowdoin (built by a student!)”

  1. collegewebeditor.com: web, marketing & PR in higher ed » Could Bowdoin College have found an efficient and cost-effective solution to the student portal problem? Says:

    […] As Robert Denton, a Senior Media and Design Consultant at Bowdoin College, explains on his personal blog, the idea was launched in late spring by the student it-cio advisory council and then quickly implemented by a talented senior, Mark Hendrickson ‘07. […]