It's sad to say but today is our student assistant developer Brett's last day with us. It has been great having him here the past year and a half but he has graduated and found a real job. We are all very happy for him and wish him the best of luck!

Brett has been an amazing asset to the Web Communications department over the past year, we would not be where we are now without him. Although he oddly escaped any shenanigans during his time here, we hope we taught him something. 😃

Just a few projects Brett has made possible:

• Academic Success Center appointment system (opens new window) - He completely revolutionized the way students schedule tutoring sessions with tutors. All appointments are now scheduled through the website, tutors are notified, and students can see their upcoming and previous appointments and even cancel an appointment if they need to. The project allows students to know exactly when a tutor will be available and dedicate time to their needs. It also reduces the time a tutor is waiting around for walk-in appointments, they know exactly when students are coming in to see them.
• Upcoming APEX website redesign - All the frontend programming and integration of the main website and eight subsites was handled by Brett.
• Commission on the Status of Women nomination form (opens new window) - Yesterday I posted about the launch of the new COSW website. One hidden piece of that site is a self-nomination form which allows the public to become part of the commission.
• OEHS Safety Training Forms (opens new window) - After a server issue took the previous forms offline Brett stepped in and quickly migrated the training forms into our CMS with reporting ability to allow for their operation. These forms are essential for all faculty working with radioactive material each year.
• Redesign Administrative Policy and Procedures Manual (APPM) - Not actually launched yet but he worked on a complete redesign of the manual to make it look like the main WSU website and allow for each section to be linked to and indexed directly.
• Combined search page style (opens new window) - The post pretty much says it all and Brett was essential to making the page look as a main wayne.edu property.
• Learning Communities request info form - The form is part of a soon to be launched redesign of the Learning Communities website which features a filterable list of learning communities and the ability to "request information" of the ones you are interested in. Previously the communities were just content on a static page. Brett was responsible for creating the database and management of them and the information requests. It will help both the Undergrad Programs department and the community coordinators keep track of interest and have a standard method of communication.
• Re-aligned site index (opens new window) - A change that gives far more context and a few options to the list of all our major websites at the university. The major change is the separation of main and medicine campus sites.
• Site analyzer in the CMS - He created a way to completely analyze the websites in the CMS for broken links, images and anything incorrect. This is all done from frontend files as if a real user was viewing and clicking through the website. In just one click it saves us hundreds of hours of manual checking.
• Current Students page re-align - Another not yet launched change on wayne.edu but it will allow current students to log in to key university systems right from the Current Students page. The need for this change was based on our tracking of how our visitors use that page. It should reduce the number of clicks and time to destination for current students.

This list is just a sample of how Brett has impacted our department and Wayne State as a whole. There are many small client tasks that he is responsible for on a daily basis that also impact the community in much more hidden ways.

We wish we could keep Brett on our team forever, but it is time for him to move on to bigger and better things. He will be missed and we wish him the best of luck!

On a side note, we are looking for our next great student developer. If you know a student who is passionate about the Web, standards, accessibility and loves getting their hands dirty, drop us a line.