Help Wanted: Building a Student Workforce


Without student employees, the Web Team at the University of Montana would cease to function, so I'd like share some of the ways we are utilizing students to enhance or Cascade support and training along with our documentation secrets and best practices.

During the summer of 2017 we migrated to Cascade 8. Our Cascade 8 migration documentation, communications, and trainings were all developed by our freshly-hired student employees, neither of whom had ever touched Cascade CMS before, but their efforts resulted in an anti-climactic launch and great reception of the new software.

We leverage students as the front line of Cascade support, including administrative actions such as permissions management and site creation, and in return they receive exposure to education/technology industries and gain important critical thinking and problem solving skills. Following a buyout in December 2017, our entire operation is now run by one staff and two students supporting 657 sites and 1023 users across five campuses.


Kayla Pierson

Kayla Pierson

Web Team Manager
University of Montana
http://www.umt.edu/

Web Team Manager at the University of Montana, I do a little bit of everything; design, development, and support. Our key objective is to empower content editors at UM while building a consistent user experience across UM websites.