PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — Over the past few years, the University of Maine at Presque Isle has undergone several changes.
A new building — Gentile Hall — was constructed on campus, a major classroom building was renovated, and the college launched plans to construct a wind turbine on campus that will produce 1 million kilowatt-hours of electricity a year.
All of these changes and more now are reflected on a revamped Web site that the university unveiled late last month.
The new site, www.umpi.edu, features necessary changes, Dr. Michael Sonntag, vice president of academic affairs, said Thursday.
“The old site was just really out of date and didn’t really work for us anymore,” he said. “You’d go to certain places on the site and you sometimes wouldn’t even know you were on the UMPI site anymore.”
The new site features a streamlined design, a simple-to-navigate organizational structure and new components created specifically for the community.
“The response has been very positive,” Sonntag said. “People are saying good things about it.”
Visitors who click on the new site see a home page that includes a slide show with a list of coming events and several new links. Those links include the Community Offerings link, which leads to a detailed listing of programs that UMPI makes available to the public.
The bulk of the site’s face-lift was handled over the summer. The university’s webmaster, Eric Brissette, and the college media relations office worked closely with Web designer and UMPI alum John Hafford to create the new site.
The site is not yet complete, however.
“The new Web site is the first phase of a larger project,” Sonntag said Thursday. “We’re going to be adding video and audio and other modes of inter-activity. We are very pleased with what has been done so far, and I think that there will be even more bells and whistles added during phase two.”
Phase two work on the project is already under way and new elements will be added as they are completed.