First, I want to acknowledge the significant contributions of two members of the original Web Development Office - Amy Marr and Sarah (Themm) Jay -- who have announced plans to pursue new opportunities.

• Amy Marr will be leaving WPI on February 17. Please join us in celebrating her accomplishments and thanking her for her contributions to WPI at a reception on Wednesday, February 15 from 2:30- 4 pm in Higgins House Sun Porch. As an alumna, she began as Coordinator of Networked Resources, working with the web committee under Helen Shuster's direction. Later, as part of the Web Development Office (WDO), she was closely involved in the initial and ongoing development and design of the website, the electronic dissertations program and the electronics pilot project.
• Sarah (Themm) Jay will be leaving WPI on February 10. Sarah joined the WPI community as a student in 1998 and began working in the Web Development Office in 2003. Sarah has an exciting opportunity to start in a new position as Publisher Support at Burst! Media in Burlington, Mass.

Second, I would like to announce plans to further enhance the university’s web presence through a number of key initiatives.

1. We will form a new web team with strong interactive marketing experience under the direction of Tara Myers, who has already been instrumental in developing new on-line marketing capabilities for the university.
2. We will implement a Content Management System in order to make the website easier for faculty and departments to update material and to more effectively provide a common look and feel across our site. This system will greatly benefit all departments of WPI by eliminating technical constraints and delays in updating and maintaining our web presence. As this system is implemented over the next few months, we will port over our existing site to the new system and begin basic training so that individual departments and offices will able to manage content more easily.
3. We will build a new external website ("extranet") that will enable us to communicate and interact more effectively with our external constituents – including prospective students/parents, corporations, alumni, funding agencies, prospective donors and news media. At the same time, we will begin to establish an "intranet" as a central resource for the internal WPI community.
4. As we implement these new initiatives, we will contract with a web developer to continue to provide basic updating and maintenance of the website during this interim period. Please continue to provide inquiries to webmaster@wpi.edu.

This is an exciting time in the development of WPI's website. We recognize and appreciate the significant accomplishments of those who worked on establishing the original site and we now look forward to building on that success in the future.

Thank you