Graduate student government leaders are working to revamp their website to make it a more relevant information source for graduate students and align it with UCLA’s main server.
The Graduate Students Association is currently collecting information through an online survey to gauge how students use the website. The survey will close Friday at midnight.
GSA president Nicole Robinson said she thinks the current website is poorly organized and not intuitive. The format makes it hard for graduate students to find information they may be interested in, such as job opportunities and fellowships.
Weiwei Wen,GSA director of communication, said she thinks some of the content is also outdated and not pertinent to students. A general lack of student knowledge about the site also contributes to low traffic on GSA’s website, which currently houses information about meetings, financial reports, educational resources, publications and graduate student news.
Robinson said she would like to see the website become more relevant to all graduate students, making it a “one-stop shop” for information.
“I’d like it to become a website for students to discover things, not a website for information they already expect to find,” Robinson said.
Wen proposed the website’s renovation last year, though she said the board has been talking about improving the site’s content and management system for the past few years.
GSA budgeted $8,000 of graduate student fees for the project and plans to hire the original creator of the site to update the management system and content, as well as shift the hosting server so that it is linked with UCLA’s. Wen said she doubts GSA will use the entire budget.
Andre Comandon, a political science graduate student, said he has never heard of the website or needed to use it.
All relevant graduate student information he receives comes in the form of department emails, he said.
Comandon said a centralized and transparent website with information on funding opportunities and jobs is greatly needed.
“The system of job opportunities for graduate students is extremely opaque and not open to everyone equally,” he said.
The GSA website currently has some information about job opportunities and fellowships. But it’s not easy to find, Robinson said.
The revamp aims, among other things, to highlight the jobs and fellowship opportunities section, as well as expand it.
Based on survey results, students currently use the website mainly for event information and news, Robinson said. There’s also instructive content on the site for filling out applications and forms, she said.
Adrienne Posne, a graduate student in comparative literature, said she does not use GSA’s website and does not know other graduate students who do.
She said if there was a website that had administrative information, such as requirements for advancing in candidacy, it would be helpful.
Robinson said this is an area she would like to add to GSA’s website in the form of departmental committee pages, which would serve as a collecting spot for information pertaining to students in each department and be linked to other department pages.