copyWrite - What's it all About?

Ready to read about About? In this weekly installment of copyWrite, we'll offer up some of the copy drafted for the About section of the new web site. "About" will be one of the eight main navigational links on all pages of the new site.

The current About section of www.wm.edu provides this summary:

About
Making the Connection

America's second-oldest college is also the best small public university in the nation. To find out more about William and Mary's heritage, reputation and notable achievements, explore the links below.

Now take a look at a couple of paragraphs intended for the new About section - drafts, of course:

About
Where professors and students are partners in discovery.

William & Mary attracts the type of student that’s itching to explore a topic beyond the textbook. We’ve found that W&M undergrads are ready—from day one—to work closely with our experienced faculty on research projects of real academic consequence.

In an intellectual environment as fertile as W&M, a good research idea can come from anywhere: professor, graduate student, undergrad or member of the community. The result is an intellectual partnership where each member of the team brings something important to the table, whether it’s the youthful idealism of the undergrad or the sharp analytical eye of the professor.

Let’s take a look at some of the incredible student-faculty collaborations from 2007-2008:

Two W&M undergrads, with the help of mentors in the English and Theater departments, wrote plays that were accepted and performed at the New York International Fringe Festival.

Freshmen members of the Sharpe Community Scholars Program took a seminar on historic building preservation in which they researched and wrote a full proposal for a Richmond building’s nomination as a National Historic Landmark.

A geology professor helped one of his undergrads fulfill a lifelong dream of solving the mystery of a sunken submarine. Using a cutting-edge lab at the nearby Applied Research Center, the students tested samples to send back to researchers in Charleston.

A professor enlisted undergraduate and graduate research assistants to help conduct a study on how the brain processes optical illusions. When the results of their research appeared in the scholarly journal Psychological Science, the students were listed as co-authors.

In my view, the storytelling in the new About section will be make our web site more personal and more engaging.

posted by Susan Evans