Case Study: Drexel School of Public Health

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Case Study: Drexel School of Public Health
Empowered by the Web

Drexel University’s School of Public Health is a fast-growing, rising star in the world of public health. Rapid growth has invited some challenges with regard to the school’s communications and marketing efforts.

School staff was interested in working with NetReach to provide consultation on how to use the web to support new student recruitment and brand-building. The benefits of using cmScribe, NetReach’s content management system (CMS), to facilitate the development and maintenance of the site was integral to realizing some crucial tactics outlined in the preliminary phase of consultation.

To be effective, the school’s broad & deep information and content needed to be presented in a consistent, logically organized fashion, and needed to be efficiently managed. We consulted to restructure the information organization making it easy for diverse audience groups to access what they need.

cmScribe has been instrumental in the following ways:

• Because of its template and style sheet driven approach, site development was rapid; page presentation and navigation is consistent, automatically. The SPH branded look is maintained in the template designs for the Center’s sites, allowing for a consistent family look across all the web properties.
• It is easy and fast to post information online, set up an approval process, and it also provided them with the ability to create content and hide it until it is ready to go live.
• Working with Drexel’s IT department, we were able to set up not just one but four separate sites running concurrently under the same domain—one main site and three sub sites (the Center sites) with separate databases all playing well together. This allowed different groups to control their own content.
• SPH Main site and Center sites make extensive use of the Dated News Item feature. New items can be set to go live on certain dates, and then be archived on another date automatically. Information displayed is flexible and can include linked pdfs, hyperlinks, photos and graphics.
• Drexel staff can use the easy Form Builder function to create Contact forms, surveys and collect various data as they see fit. The data is stored in a database (which is easily retrievable). Notification of submission via email to a designated administrator and auto email responders to users are also part of this feature.
• Broken links were a substantial problem in the previous iteration of the Drexel site. cmScribe prevents broken links and orphaned pages. Navigation is always up-to-date and correctly integrated and automatically maintained.
• Search engine optimization (SEO) is easily facilitated using the SEO toolset that is part of cmScribe. Everything from keywords and definitions, to alt tags, to page titles.
• cmScribe is easy and intuitive to use, as after initial training and a few follow-up calls staff did not require any additional support and they are managing over 300 hundred pages as of this writing (02/12/07)

This new method of creating and managing content on the Drexel School of Public Health site has helped the school convey that it is technologically on par with the top public health schools in the country. Rapid and timely dissemination of information has also proved extremely helpful in fundraising efforts. cmScribe has empowered Drexel staff to push the limits of the internet as the school grows.

For more information about Drexel University's School of Public Health or other Netreach projects, please contact us at 215-283-2300.