Duke Mathematics Department

We had several goals for this academic department website project: 1) create space for effective undergraduate and graduate student recruitment content, 2) define departmental research areas and map faculty, 3) showcase the depth of seminar/speaker series events, and 4) create a course section that met the needs of math majors and non-majors who take courses to full graduation requirements.

Visuals and Humans

We prioritized space for "hero" images of faculty and students to advance the department's ethos of diversity and inclusion. We also emphasized our research profile, highlighted research accomplishments, and provided highly visual entries into research areas.

Claiming space & Connecting People

For each research area, we developed a bounding statement to make it clear where we are a player in what are otherwise very broad fields. We mapped faculty, including profile images, and included keywords. Faculty can be mapped to as many research areas as is appropriate in reflecting their research portfolios.

Several Ways to Explore Courses

We created a page for each course and tagged it by criteria important to our various audiences. The Calculus & Engineering Math courses represents the most commonly taken undergraduate courses. The Courses by Career Track tab links to text and course listings that recommend math, computer science and statistical science courses to students interested in a broad swath of career paths. And the Courses by Math Track helps math majors and graduate students identify courses in various mathematics subfields.

Showcasing Intellectual Depth

We moved away from a vertical listing of events, one after another, and bundled them by the seminar series name. This allows undergraduate and graduate students, and visitors, to quickly find the happenings in fields of interest.