Project Story
Associated Colleges of the Midwest
The Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) is a consortium of 13 academically excellent, independent liberal arts colleges located in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Colorado.
They are among the oldest, most prestigious undergraduate institutions in the nation, and each has a distinctive identity and set of traditions. At the same time, the ACM colleges share many characteristics, especially a fundamental commitment to the liberal arts as the best preparation for life, employment, and contributing to society.
ACM has offered consortial study-abroad programs for more than 40 years. Individual ACM colleges also offer international programs in locations around the world and in subjects ranging from art history to marine biology. Each year nearly 1,500 students from ACM colleges spend a term or longer on an international program. On some ACM campuses, one-half to three-fourths of recent graduating classes have participated in off-campus study.
Webitects spent considerable time with ACM staff and performing audience and organizational research. The resulting website emphasizes ACM's benefits and services - especially the study abroad programs.
The site's design employs liberal use of ACM's great photography (mostly from the study abroad programs) in page headers and slideshows.
The site is built using our content management system allowing ACM staff to add and update content at will. The system allows access to pages or sections to be assigned by administrators so that content responsibility can be delegated while still maintaining editorial control.
Future development phases will put the study abroad application and behind-the-scenes tracking process online and program participants will be encouraged to post content to the website. We have also created an intranet to be used by ACM staff and member colleges.