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MCC Daily Tribune Archive

President's Wednesday Message


Hopefully, by now you’ve had a chance to visit our re-imagined website, www.monroecc.edu , and you might have wondered why certain changes have been made.

We often call our website our virtual front door, and increasingly, it provides prospective students with their very first impression of MCC.  Adult students thinking about college may explore our website after their workday is done and their children have finally fallen asleep.  They need easily accessible information to guide their decision-making—long after our offices are closed for the night.   For younger students, searching for a college on the web is the first thought, not the second.  In a 2015 Ruffalo Noel-Levitz survey of over 3,000 college-bound seniors and juniors, 80% said college websites influenced or highly influenced their interest in visiting specific colleges.  This national data has been validated in conversations with our current students.

In talking with our students, we began to see the web through their eyes, and the view was not always a positive one for www.monroecc.edu.  The intended audience was not clear. Students—and their parents and other influencers—were coming to the site seeking clear, current content and easy to find (and understand) answers to questions about everything from programs of study to financial aid. The information they sought was sometimes buried deep, confusingly labeled, no longer current, or even missing altogether.  Students also told us that our website did not capture the MCC they came to every day—a vibrant, welcoming, and vital learning community.  We realized that their expectations had changed, but our website had not.  The site no longer reflected the inspiring spirit of excellence and culture of academic richness and student support that are in our College’s DNA.

We last redesigned our website in 2009; six years is more than a lifetime in Internet years. Since then not only have expectations for ease of use, accessibility of content, and sophistication of design changed, but the way that users access our website has changed as well.  You see it every time you walk down the hallway or enter a classroom or office: students on their smartphones.  The
Pew Research Center (2015) found that 64% of Americans own a smartphone (up from 35% in 2011).  Importantly for our student demographics, Pew found that low-income Americans are more likely to be smartphone-dependent, meaning their phones are their only means of accessing the web, as are minority populations. So, when we set about the redesign, we knew we needed a website that worked as well on a smartphone as it did on a tablet, laptop, and desktop: it was an access issue.  Our new site does just that.

The website that launched on Monday resulted from months of work by an outstanding team co-chaired by Assistant Director of Web Communications Colleen Brennan-Barry and Associate Vice President for Enrollment Management Randy Bowen.  Significantly, this site reflects the input and feedback of MCC students, faculty, and staff, all of whom have been reviewing the site throughout its development and have made the design better and stronger at every step.

Thanks to everyone who has helped to make MCC’s website is a whole new .edu!


Share your thoughts on our new website here.

Anne M. Kress
President's Office
09/23/2015