WMU home page remains focused on prospective students

KALAMAZOO--Western Michigan University's home page has new features, but remains focused on serving as the front door of the University for prospective students and first-time and infrequent visitors to the WMU website.

A new series of front-page features went live in December in time to welcome prospective students and their families over the holidays and start of the new year.

The first four rotating features, along with additional features now in production, are designed to convey critical University marketing messages about student, faculty, and alumni success; groundbreaking research; global and local engagement; and opportunities for students to work one-on-one with top-notch faculty.

"For the past year, we've focused our front-page efforts exclusively on traditional first-year students. It's been very effective, along with other marketing efforts, in attracting healthy increases to our number of traditional applicants," says Cheryl Roland, executive director of university relations.

"We've planned all along, however, to add features that appeal directly to other audiences. In the coming months, the front page will feature, non-traditional and graduate students, transfer students, international students and others who reflect the breadth of our University community," says Roland.

Along with the new rotating features on the home page is a series of photo links to stories best described as points of pride or developments that would be found among the year's top news stories. Those links, which will also change regularly, offer visitors a look at important stories that illustrate the caliber of WMU programs and people.

For today's news, a complete calendar of public events, and arts and entertainment, members of the campus community and other regular visitors to the website are encouraged to set WMU News as their default home page. WMU News has been updated every day for 15 years and includes an archive of more than 11,000 news stories, dating back to 1997.

Visit WMU News at wmich.edu/news