2001-02 Psi Chi Website Award Winners
P
si Chi is pleased to announce the first winners of the new Psi Chi Website Awards. The winning chapters and their respective URLs are listed below. Each of the winning chapters received a check for $200, and summaries of the winning websites were featured in the Winter 2003 issue of Eye on Psi Chi, and are listed below as well. Psi Chi congratulates these winning chapters for developing and hosting these excellent chapter websites. Hats off, as well, to the chapter webmasters and designers who produced these excellent sites.
California State University, Fresno
http://www.csufresno.edu/studentorgs/psichi
Saint Anselm College (NH)
http://www.anselm.edu/internet/psych/PsiChi/welcome.htm
University of Illinois at Chicago
http://www2.uic.edu/stud_orgs/hon/psichi
California State University, Fresno
www.csufresno.edu/studentorgs/psichi
The CSUF Psi Chi website was established to facilitate communication, increase member participation, and disseminate chapter information. Because the site represents the organization of Psi Chi to current and potential members, as well as to the general public, the chapter firmly believes that its website must be held to a high standard. This standard includes an aesthetic component that combines the dignity and scholarly nature of Psi Chi with an efficient and usable navigation for those who use it. The site also strives to empower and encourage the social and scholarly interaction of the chapter's members.
Accordingly, the site makes use of many tools to further its mission. First, an online message forum provides to students a "cyber" meeting place where questions and ideas can be exchanged with or without anonymity. An online signup for an electronic mailing list and newsletters allows students to receive reminders of meetings, lists of scholarships, and other valuable information via e-mail. All general meeting minutes along with other points of interest are preserved in an archived format. Feedback forms allow the site's operators to keep the information relevant, stay connected, and fine-tune the site to the needs of members. The site also features an "Introduction to the Mission of Psi Chi" movie (prepared with Macromedia Flash and Adobe Photoshop) that introduces users to the website and the purposes of Psi Chi. Finally, the site also features an automatically updated "Psychology in the News" section on the front page of the site.
The homepage of the CSUF chapter website, with its easy-to-use interface, provides several useful features in a simple design. Below the colorful graphics at the top of the page are a list of chapter webpages and links on the left, an announcement box in the center under the chapter name, and an automatically updated "Psychology in the News" section on the right. An eye-catching addition is the motion graphic under the announcement box, which displays the purpose of Psi Chi in moving type and pictures.
Saint Anselm College (NH)
www.anselm.edu/internet/psych/PsiChi/welcome.htm
The website for the Saint Anselm College (NH) chapter was created to enhance the chapter's relationship and participation with other institutions in the field of psychology as well as within the college's community. The aesthetics of the site are unique in that the site integrates basic navigational elements with an innovative look and feel. The welcome page is designed to guide the eye first across the top from the school's seal through the main navigational links found on each page, to loop elliptically through the page's main links, ending at contact information and the college's global navigation. The user-friendly layout enables visitors with smaller screens to obtain pertinent information without sacrificing the site's usability or aesthetic experience. Use of color within the site is complimentary as it juxtaposes minimal amounts of orange with varying hues and tones of blue. The use of blue was essential to maintain consistency with Saint Anselm College colors.
The chapter's philosophy is mirrored in its website--that participation and success in scholarly activity emerges from an environment of friendship and encouragement. The website provides several pages of resources for grants and other means of funding for the collaboration of students and faculty on major research projects. It also contains links to its members' major research projects to foster interest, encouragement, and scholarly conversation with students of Saint Anselm College as well as with students from other institutions. Frequent updates of the chapter's upcoming activities and meeting minutes also keeps the chapter's members involved and interested. An outline of the purpose of Psi Chi is also provided to inform students of the mission of Psi Chi and its benefits to members. This information, along with the funding resources, links to student research, and recent updates, not only serves to cultivate research interest in undergraduate students at Saint Anselm College and beyond, but it also serves to promote Psi Chi's goal of excellence in psychology.
The Saint Anselm chapter website also uses a simple, clean design to lead the user into the site and its many features. The use of curved lines and layout, along with the three-dimensional shadows and graphics, make the site visually appealing without unnecessary clutter. The footer menu allows the user to easily link to various sections of the college website without having to go back to the college homepage.
University of Illinois at Chicago
www2.uic.edu/stud_orgs/hon/psichi
The University of Illinois at Chicago Psi Chi chapter's website serves to communicate the purpose, activities, events, and history at the chapter and national level to the UIC psychology community. To reflect the diversity of the UIC campus (designated by several major surveys as the most ethnically diverse campus in the nation), the chapter chose a number of diverse "hosts" from the history of psychology as "spokespersons" for the primary areas of the site. Such hosts include the prominent female psychologist, Christine Ladd-Franklin, and a major African American psychologist, Kenneth Clark. By following the links that each host presents, site users can find a brief biography detailing that individual's contributions to the field.
The chapter chose to eliminate frames and to present a visually appealing main page that employed a higher level of Web technologies. The homepage presents a "half-radius" of link portals, each connected visually to a central image that changes when the user places his or her mouse over each image. A very restricted palette of color as well as a minimalist layout in the design were chosen to correspond with the Web's move toward more restrained and refined design; however, this design still allowed the chapter to retain the colors and emblems of Psi Chi.
In both content and design, this website avoids egregiousness. The About and Join sections are both straightforward, supplying the visitor with the information that he or she desires with a minimum amount of fuss. The Events section is updated regularly and is utilized as an adjunct to postings on the school's PSYCHMAJORS electronic mailing list, which also includes event announcements. In addition, the site includes an online Photo Album and a Resources page that features downloadable handouts from in-demand chapter presentations. The chapter also created a Minutes section, where all visitors may view the minutes of each week's officer meetings.
The Psi Chi chapter website for the University of Illinois at Chicago uses historically significant psychologists as "hosts" to present the site's content to users.