During the summer, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletes honored Joe Glover, interim athletic director, for his work on the IUS Athletics website.
The NAIA and the Sports Information Directors of America had their annual NAIA-SIDA Convention on July 3 in Atherton, Calif., at Menlo College.
“The judges were most impressed with [the website’s] organization and integration of social media,” Ron Smith, coordinator for the NAIA-SIDA website competition, said.
The criteria the website was judged on included content, visual design, navigation and experience. For the judges, IUSathletics.com excelled in every category.
During the convention, IU Southeast placed second out of the 38 other colleges being recognized for their Athletics website.
The current IUS Athletics website was created by Glover.
Glover said he spent a lot of time re-designing the website, which was re-launched during the summer of 2009.
Smith said the involvement of Facebook within the website is one of its best qualities.
“The Facebook page is integrated so well, it shouldn’t even open in a new window,” Smith said.
Glover said the main reason for re-designing the website was to promote a more user-friendly, easily accessible website.
“I wanted our fans to have a better overall experience when they browsed our site,” Glover said. “I really believe that our website is the front door to our program and it needs to communicate what our student athletes are all about athletically and academically.”
The website has also had an impact on campus.
”Fans seem to really enjoy the video, live stats, fan polls and other new improvements,” Glover said. “The official online home for the Grenadiers has come a long way in a few years and I think our students, coaches, athletes and fans appreciate what we have been able to do with our online image.”
The website has numerous interactive links to enhance the Web-browsing experience. It displays the most recent news feeds of sporting events at IU Southeast, as well as an up-to-date scoreboard.
Glover said he is pleased with the positive reaction to IUSathletics.com.
Glover said he intends to continue working with the website to provide the very best experience to IUS sports fans.
By HANNA WOODS
Staff
hrwoods@umail.iu.edu