Website refresh presented at board meeting // TCC board of trustees spotlight website changes, student stories in Jan. session

Board members applaud Elva LeBlanc on becoming the new Chansellor for TCC Photo by Joel Solis/The Collegian
Board members applaud Elva LeBlanc on becoming the new Chansellor for TCC
Photo by Joel Solis/The Collegian

ALEX HOBEN
editor-in-chief
alexandra.hoben@my.tccd.edu 

TCC unveils new website changes directed at increasing enrollment and refreshing the look of the pages.

During the January TCC board of trustees meeting Robert Heyser, the director of web communications, held a presentation showing the new designs and changes that would be happening to the website.

“We started this project in 2021, and we had a focus really on doing this on our high traffic pages,” he said. “We’ve got analytics, we’ve got user testing that tell us what’s our highest traffic, what pages we need to focus on and which pages need a little more work.”

During the presentation, Heyser said that the department focused on three main objectives: engaging visual designs, creating more school pride and spirit and modernizing the web code.

According to Heyser, the new web page changes would start publishing on the 20, and should be stabilized by the next afternoon. When asked about how it will affect current students, Heyser said that there wouldn’t be much of a change.

“Most people that are going to be impacted by this will be prospective students more than current students,” Heyser said. “The biggest change for current students will be the student’s portal page. That design will change but the content will be the same.”

In other board news, every item on the consent agenda was passed. One item, an interlocal agreement with Fort Worth regarding an economic development for Panther Island,  was taken out of the agenda to be voted on separately because trustee vice president Barr was unable to vote on the item due to a conflict of interest.

Barr submitted a form of conflict of interest due to his past position as chairman of the real estate council of Fort Worth. While he addressed the board he emphasized how important he believes the agreement to be.

“This item on the agenda requires a fairly small investment considering the value of the land the college owns, and I think it will lead to maximizing the value of what TCC owns,” Barr said.

Also during the meeting three more members of the TCC student body past and present were highlighted. The people featured this time were NE graduate Kamilah LaFavor, SE graduate Leslie Ramirez, SO faculty member Christopher Tovar and NW SGA president Sammy Jepsen.

These student highlights are a recent addition to the board meetings. According to TCC coordinator of board records management Frida Castañeda-Lomónaco, this has been a great way for students and administration to connect.

“We’ve started even highlighting student stories at our board meetings, and I hadn’t seen anything like that done previously,” Castañeda-Lomónaco said. “I mean that in itself has been really fantastic for us. Being in the administrative office we’re so distanced from students, and so it’s easy sometimes to forget that that’s what we’re here for.”