College website redesign
According to an email that Vice President of Marketing Roger Degerman sent to students and faculty on March 2, Guilford College’s website will undergo a redesign. The College has partnered with Spark451, a design website that specializes in assisting colleges and universities with their websites. The email states that the website redesign will be “future friendly,” meaning that it could be easily reworked as the website’s needs change.
The website was most recently redone through the web design company Finalsite. Finalsite also developed the #WeAreGuilford webpage, which won a silver award in the 2014 Summit Creative Awards. The SCA recognizes design work by small companies.
The email addressing the newest website redesign stated that one of the goals of the revamp was to attract new students.
The email also said that the College will periodically contact community members in an attempt to ensure a community-approved website. Representatives from Spark451 visited campus on March 7 and 8 to speak directly with the community.
Guilford Undergraduate Symposium
On April 22, students gathered across campus for the annual Guilford Undergraduate Symposium, a chance to present research developed independently or within classes.
Some students were there as representatives of Guilford organizations, like Every Campus a Refuge, which held a panel, or the Greenleaf Review, Guilford’s literary magazine, which held a reading of students’ work.
There were also presentations in the form of displays or performances, such as junior Molly Anne Marcotte’s “Bodyspeak,” a dance presentation culminating from her research through a Justice & Policy Studies independent study.
There was also a panel discussion on perspectives on Rwanda from junior Yves Dusenge, senior Ajiah Jones and senior Leah Meservey.
CCE SGA proposes “Spring into Multiculturalism”
In an email sent to faculty in March by CCE student and SGA member James “Alex” Ricks, the CCE SGA proposed a new annual program for cultural awareness to be instituted at Guilford. The proposal for the program was sent to faculty with a request for feedback on March 7.
The proposed program, “Spring into Multiculturalism,” would take place every spring semester and have a different theme every year.
The program aims to spawn multiple community engagement events throughout the semester in order to promote cross-cultural understanding.
The proposal from the CCE SGA also promoted the idea of engaging with the greater Triad area with multicultural events when possible. This would help increase Guilford’s visibility and possibly promote enrollment.
“Each annual program cycle will stage on an apolitical, areligious, unbiased and neutral platform,” said the proposal.
The proposal offers the idea of an Open Culture Committee made up of community members to plan the semester’s events in an unbiased manner.
“Spring into Multiculturalism” would offer a week for different cultural affinity groups to teach about their culture and encourage any interested groups to attend events in accordance with those weeks.
Some of the projects were developed through school departments like the Multicultural Education Department, the Cape Fear River Basin Studies Program or Principled Problem Solving. In addition, research and work accomplished over J-Term had a place at GUS.
