copyWrite - It's Academic

In this week's copyWrite, we post an entry with a bit of copy from the new Academics section of the new W&M website.

Academics
The best small public university in America. Period.

William & Mary is an academic powerhouse. Our undergraduate and graduate students choose W&M because of its celebrated liberal arts tradition and commitment to hands-on, original research. They know they’ll work hard, but that their uncommon efforts will be personally, academically and professionally rewarding.

Our faculty members are not only internationally recognized leaders in their fields, but passionately engaged educators. They understand that original research, meaningful community service, and a first-person global perspective have the power to turn an ordinary class into an unforgettable experience.

Academic life at William & Mary is spread across five schools and dozens of academic departments. If we do our job right, then you’ll step foot in nearly all of them. Our students are too multi-talented and intellectually curious to be pigeonholed as a “chemistry major” or a “law student.”

If you’re seeking to be challenged, engaged, inspired—to be educated—you belong at William & Mary.

posted by Susan Evans

copyWrite - W&M Impact

In this week's copyWrite, you'll find a sample entry for a special interest feature (SPIFF) that will be called W&M Impact. This spiffilicious example, written by Erin Zagursky in W&M University Relations, will be one of many profiles and stories showcasing the many ways W&M makes Williamsburg, Virginia, and the world a better place to live.

W&M Impact
Service: W&M's Hottest Ticket
At W&M, service trips are worth sleeping on the floor.

At William and Mary, students aren't lining up in sleeping bags to wait for concert tickets. They're camping out and sleeping on floors in hopes of getting the trip of a lifetime. Service trips are the hot ticket at William and Mary.

Helping others is infectious here. At last count, students spend more than 323,000 hours doing community service each year - across the globe and locally. In the 'burg, they tutor or read to "adopted" grandparents, and in Uganda, they build schools for orphans.

"Service is in the best tradition of William and Mary," Interim William and Mary President W. Taylor Reveley III told students during a spring dinner. "I'm very proud of you."

This year, the Office of Community Engagement offered more international service trips than ever. The 16 trips - to locations like Honduras and Tanzania - had students setting up medical clinics, providing educational programs, doing research and building relationships. Along with the international trips, students served in the good ol' U.S. of A. with seven spring break service trips. Spring break trips are so popular among students that they have camped out the night before sign-ups. This year, the students were entered in a lottery where hitting the jackpot meant spending their spring break in places like New Orleans, helping with disaster relief.

"I've been doing community service for a long time and I don't have anything planned over Spring Break, so what better to do than to help some people out while I'm on break," said student Lamar Shambley.

posted by Susan Evans

copyWrite - VIMS Featured Research

copyWrite is a feature of the re.web blog. Often on Fridays, we'll show you a snippet of some of the new web copy. In this week's copyWrite, we highlight a new special interest feature that will be available on the new website for VIMS. Dave Malmquist wrote this sample for Featured Research - the new VIMS site will also have Featured People and Featured Programs.

Featured Research

Seagrass? Me neither
A study led by Dr. Robert Orth reveals a troubling decline in seagrasses around the world. He’s now striving to inform the public about why these grasses are so important, and how their loss affects humans and marine ecosystems.

Seagrass crisis global

Dr. Robert Orth has studied Chesapeake Bay seagrasses for more than 30 years. He knows that this vital resource is in serious trouble—with excess nutrients, turbid water, and a warming climate as the main culprits.

Now, a study by Orth and a dozen international colleagues reveals what may be the most troublesome finding of all: seagrass loss is global, but the public remains largely unaware of both the problem and its consequences. Seagrasses provide a home for many important fish and shellfish species, limit erosion, soak up nutrients, and help improve water clarity.

The study was conducted by Orth and other members of the Global Seagrass Trajectories Working Group, part of a national effort to promote the analysis and synthesis of ecological information.

Orth's team found that reported cases of seagrass loss haven risen by nearly a factor of 10 during the last 40 years. Says Orth, "We compiled reports of seagrass loss from as far north as Denmark, as far south as Australia, and from the Chesapeake Bay to the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean, and Japan."

The scientists argue that these losses, caused mostly by human activities in the coastal zone, constitute a global crisis for seagrasses.

Despite the magnitude and rapidity of these losses, the team found that seagrasses receive from 3- to 100-times less media attention than coral reefs, salt marshes, and mangroves—even though seagrasses deliver "ecosystem services" that are at least twice as high as these other imperiled habitats.

Orth attributes the public's lack of knowledge to the "invisibility of seagrasses." "These plants grow underwater," he notes, "and in very shallow areas that most boaters avoid. Also, the animals that seagrasses harbor are often small and hidden, in contrast to the large and dazzling organisms that attract the general public to coral reefs."

Orth's team recommends a two-pronged effort—increased conservation efforts and education for the public and resource managers.

"One of our goals," says Orth, "is to educate people about the value that seagrasses provide and how important they are compared to coral reefs, mangroves, and other coastal ecosystems. Right now we're the 'ugly duckling' of these charismatic habitats, but hopefully we're going to change that."

posted by Dave Malmquist, VIMS Director of Communications

copyWrite - W&M Inquiry

This week's copyWrite post presents a sample entry for a special interest feature that will be called W&M Inquiry. Working with Arthur Knight of W&M's Film Studies Program, the writers at mStoner drafted King Kong Eats College Town. This profile will be used for a series showcasing research from all units within the College as well as other ways, contemporary and historic, in which W&M has put itself ahead of the curve.

W&M Inquiry
King Kong Eats College Town
Film fest paints portrait of Williamsburg reflected off the big screen.

There’s more to Williamsburg’s history than fifes and three-cornered hats. This past February, the William & Mary community celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Kimball Theatre (formerly the Williamsburg Theatre), an old-fashioned single-screen beauty right in the heart of Duke of Gloucester (DoG) Street. Forget the Governor’s Palace; this is where the real Williamsburg history lives. It’s a history of great cinema and a thriving movie-going culture in one of America’s classic small towns.

Williamsburgians toasted the Kimball’s 75th birthday with a unique, four-day film event called “When the Movies Come to Town! Williamsburg and Film History.” Audiences enjoyed free screenings of cinematic classics like King Kong, Gone With the Wind and The Godfather prefaced by scholarly presentations with a Williamsburg focus.

“It combined the best features of a film festival—getting to see great films and have fun watching cool stuff—with the best features of a public intellectual event,” explains Arthur Knight, director of W&M’s Film Studies program and associate professor in both the American Studies and English departments.

The event launched with a special Valentine’s Day show featuring Roman Holiday. Before the show, two William & Mary students shared stories they’d gathered from community interviews about the Williamsburg dating and dancing scene of the 1930s and 40s.

“And then some students from the College’s Ballroom Dance Club and Swing Dance Club gave dance demonstrations interpolated with clips from classic American musicals,” says professor Knight.

The film event proved that we can learn a lot about the values, prejudices, and shifting attitudes of a town and its citizenry by examining how they received the most influential and controversial movies of their time. Something the organizers wanted to examine fully was the history of race relations in Williamsburg and how those played out at the movies.

“That’s one of the things that’s a fraught element of our theater,” explains professor Knight. “The Williamsburg Theatre was segregated until the early 1960s. When Gone With the Wind played there, African Americans couldn’t see the movie.”

The festival’s screening of the groundbreaking 1967 film In the Heat of the Night included a roundtable discussion of race relations “in and at the movies” with scholars from W&M, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and the University of Virginia.

The idea for the four-day film event was the brainchild of the Global Film s-GIG (sustained Global Inquiry Group). Professor Knight and his colleagues hope to make the film festival an annual Williamsburg institution, where students and locals can gather to enjoy the best of American and global cinema, and get a little scholarly insight with their Raisinets.

posted by Susan Evans

copyWrite - W&M Style

In this week's copyWrite, we are previewing a sample entry for a special interest feature that will be called W&M Style. Drafted by the writers at mStoner, this entry profiles the quietly quirky, eagerly earnest--but always fun and entertaining--student life and traditions at W&M.

W&M Impact
Wren Ten
A cappella for the people.
William & Mary gets a little crazy about a cappella. With 5,500 undergraduates and 11 different a cappella groups with an average of 15 members each, that means… well, you do the math. But if you attend W&M, chances are you’re either in an a cappella group yourself, are dating someone in an a cappella group, or have had nightmares involving an a cappella group living under your bed.

We hear that some people still don’t understand what’s the “big deal” about a cappella. That’s probably because they’ve only witnessed a cappella in a formal setting, like a big concert in the Wren Great Hall or the Williamsburg Presbyterian Church. Sometimes the magic of great a cappella—the seamless harmonizing and vocal acrobatics—are lost when there’s so much distance between the performers and the audience.

That’s why the William & Mary A Cappella Council (yes, there’s an a cappella council) came up with Wren Ten. Wren Ten is the polar opposite of a formal concert. Every Wednesday night at 10pm, one of W&M’s a cappella groups crowds into the Wren Portico for an up-close-and-personal look at world-class a cappella in action.

Why is Wren Ten different? First of all, it’s all about having fun. The performers joke with the crowd, take requests and perform even cheesier skits than usual. Hardcore a cappella fans love it because they can see all of their favorite groups in a casual setting. Newbies love it because it showcases what’s best about a cappella at W&M: the variety of styles, the breadth of repertoire and the fun-loving attitude of the students.

Consult the A Cappella Council website for a current schedule of Wren Ten concerts and experience one of W&M’s most beloved musical traditions in a whole new way.

posted by Susan Evans

copyWrite - W&M Impact

This week's copyWrite post is a first peek at a sample entry for a special interest feature (a SPIFF) that will be called W&M Impact. Written by Joe McClain, Alma mater of the national bird will be one of several stories and profiles showcasing the many ways W&M makes Williamsburg, Virginia, and the world a better place to live.

W&M Impact
Alma mater of the national bird

Seeing a bald eagle is a thrill that never wears thin and some of the best places on the East Coast to see our national bird are within a few minutes drive of William and Mary's campus.

You can occasionally see bald eagles from campus, but a surer bet is to go out to the Colonial Parkway between Jamestown and Yorktown. Eagles nest on Jamestown Island and they’re a common sight from the meadows and beaches along the James River.

It's poetic justice to have bald eagles so accessible to us, since two of our researchers have deserved a lot of the credit for the comeback story of the bald eagle. Mitchell Byrd and Bryan Watts of William & Mary's Center for Conservation Biology have documented the return of the bald eagle in the Chesapeake Bay region from near-zero numbers to the point where there were enough of them for the species to be removed from the federal endangered species list in summer of 2007.

Each year, the Center for Conservation Biology conducts census flights during nesting season over the shoreline of the Chesapeake and its major tributaries. Quite often, it's Byrd and/or Watts climbing into the cockpit of a Cessna 172 operated by a former fighter pilot known as Captain Fuzzzo—spelled with three z's. “The middle z,” he says, “is silent.”

The Endangered Species Act allowed for eagle nesting areas to be protected from development. The Center for Conservation Biology’s flights pinpointed the areas—even the individual trees—which needed to be protected. For their contribution to the eagle's comeback, Byrd and Watts received National Recovery Champion awards from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in March, 2008.

The story of the eagle is not over. Removal of the birds from the endangered species list will open up lots of prime real estate that once only eagles could call home.

"About 95 percent of the eagle nests are within three kilometers of the main river channel. Eagles feed on fish and other aquatic prey, so they live in close proximity to the main shoreline,” Watts said. “Delisting presents a potential conflict because the shoreline property is the most valuable property for development."

posted by Susan Evans

copyWrite - Historically Innovative

The copyWrite post for today is more copy from the About section - this web page will probably be titled "Cool Facts." Take a quick read through these; whether you're a seasoned member of the W&M community, or a graduating senior, you may find some nifty surprises here.

About W&M
Cool Facts

Founded in 1693, William & Mary is the second oldest educational institution in the U.S.

Four Presidents of the United States benefited from educational programs offered by the College: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe and John Tyler.

Although William & Mary retains its traditional title of "College," it is in reality a small university that offers advanced degrees in several fields.

The average SAT score of William & Mary's incoming first-year students is higher than that of any other Virginia institution.

Phi Beta Kappa, the premier academic honor society in America, was founded by College of William & Mary students in 1776.

William & Mary was the first college in the nation to institute an honor code of conduct for students.

William & Mary is one of only eight U.S. institutions of higher education designated a "Public Ivy." A Public Ivy is a state-assisted institution which offers a superior education at a cost far below that of Ivy League schools.

William & Mary's 12-to-1 student-faculty ratio is among the lowest of national public universities, a factor that helps strengthen the College's traditional commitment to teaching.

Founded in 1842, the William & Mary Society of the Alumni is the sixth oldest such group in the U.S.

Named for its presumed architect, the Sir Christopher Wren Building was completed in 1697 and provided classrooms, library, dining hall and a chapel for generations of William & Mary students. It is the oldest academic building in continuous use in the U.S., and classes are still taught within its walls.

A recent NCAA study shows that only William & Mary and Stanford University reported student-athlete SAT scores of at least 1,000 in eight categories based on gender and sport.

A succession of influential individuals—including President George Washington, President John Tyler, Chief Justice Warren Burger, former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger have held the post of Chancellor of the College of William & Mary. In 2006, Sandra Day O'Connor, former Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, was installed as the College's 23rd Chancellor.

William & Mary has the highest number of per capita Peace Corp volunteers in 2008 who are alumni.

posted by Susan Evans

copyWrite - Campus Life = Service

This week's copyWrite offers another writing snippet from the future Campus Life section of the W&M site. Many, many W&M students commit to community service during their time here. This draft copy offers insight about Service as a part of life on campus:

Service
Someone’s got to save the world. Might as well be us.

A William & Mary education is a “scholarship of engagement.” Other people just complain about the devastating effects of third-world poverty, homelessness or global warming. We go out and do something about it.

Seventy-five percent of W&M students participate in service projects, contributing an astonishing 323,000 service hours each year through 90 regional partnerships and dozens of national and international service trips.

The Office of Community Engagement is the hub of service life on campus. OCE runs the college’s core youth mentoring and tutoring programs and helps professors integrate service learning into their curriculum. OCE also supports and trains individual students and campus organizations that want to start their own service projects.

Some of the most powerful and successful service projects at W&M are run by students. The annual Alan Bukzin Bone Marrow Drive is the largest college bone marrow drive in the country, collecting thousands of individual blood types to add to the national registry. And student-led organizations like Project Mexico, Schools for Schools and Destination China send W&M volunteers across the world.

Every year, 75 motivated students live and serve together as part of the Sharpe Community Scholars Program. “Sharpies” might take a special seminar on African American Vernacular English while participating in youth tutoring and mentoring programs, or study historic building preservation while lobbying to save a local landmark.

This scholarship of engagement affects and informs the lives of our graduates. W&M produces more Peace Corps volunteers than almost any other mid-sized college in the nation.

posted by Susan Evans

copyWrite - Connecting with Potential Donors

In copyWrite this week, I'm including copy that might work for the Giving section of the new College site. Giving, one of the eight main navigational links on all pages of the new site, will connect potential donors with information about W&M.

This first draft of Giving copy makes a compelling case:

Giving
Excellence doesn’t happen by accident.

William & Mary thrives because we’re blessed with one of the most generous support systems in the country. During the groundbreaking Campaign for William & Mary (2000-2007), you helped raise half a billion dollars for this remarkable institution. But our work isn’t over.

We want to continue to attract the top students in the nation and extend the reach of a W&M education to every deserving applicant. That means more need-based and merit-based scholarships.

We want to reward our hard-working faculty members who are both world-famous scholars and committed teachers. That means more endowed professorships, research grants and competitive salary packages.

We want to continually expand and improve our historic, beautiful campus. That means more state-of-the-art research, performance and athletic facilities.

We want what you want. A William & Mary that never falls short of its own inspiring vision.

posted by Susan Evans

copyWrite - Thousands will click here.

In this weekly installment of copyWrite, we'll share some copy that might be like the narrative that ends up on the Admission section of the new web site. Admission will be one of the eight main navigational links on all pages of the new site.

Breeze through this draft web copy created as a first draft for the Undergraduate Admission section of the new www.wm.edu:

Undergraduate Admission
Don’t let our looks fool you. We have big brains under all our beauty.

William & Mary consistently attracts the most exceptionally talented high school seniors from Virginia and across the world. Last year, nearly 11,000 applicants fought for 1,350 spots in William & Mary’s class of 2011. Take a look at the numbers for this year’s freshmen:

* 79% graduated in top 10% of their class
* the middle 50th percentile on SAT was 1270-1430
* the class includes 77 high school valedictorians and 33 salutatorians

But what really sets W&M students apart is a passion for learning. There are no one-dimensional eggheads around here. (Though there are enough smart alecs for us to anticipate some crack about eggs being three dimensional.) Chemistry majors write poetry for the literary magazine, business majors volunteer in soup kitchens, and football players star in Shakespeare. It’s all part of the proud intellectual culture at W&M, extending from the classroom to the dorm room and everywhere in between.

Yes, we work hard. But that’s because we’re working on things that we love. Our professors—hands down the most committed and engaged in the country—inspire us to go one step further, to challenge conventional wisdom and uncover new truths.

posted by Susan Evans

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

copyWrite - a new weekly feature of this blog

copyWrite is a new weekly feature of the re.web blog. Each Friday, we'll show you a snippet (is that a technical term?) of some of the web copy that we're producing and perfecting for the new W&M web site.

Although a picture's worth a thousand words, we still need some - words that is. As you know, eight links will appear on the main navigation for the new www.wm.edu. One of the eight links will bring you to a section called Campus Life.

To provide a frame of reference here's the copy from the current W&M Campus Life page:

Campus Life
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, here are a couple of paragraphs aimed for the new Campus Life section - in draft format, of course! We'll edit, edit again, and then again between now and late summer. Here goes:

Campus Life - Draft Copy
Being busy just got a lot more fun

If William & Mary students look busy, that’s because we are. Busy making lifelong friends. Busy making exciting music and theater. Busy making a difference in the world. With more than 400 campus clubs and organizations to choose from, staying active and engaged at W&M isn’t an afterthought; it’s a way of life.

Forgive us if we get a little intense about our interests. We were born that way. That’s why we have well over a hundred special interest clubs inspired by political engagement, religious faith, ethnic and cultural pride, environmental protection, and endless geekery from quiz bowl to ping pong to heavy metal.

posted by Susan Evans