This year, you won’t have to chase down the latest issue of Mortarboard, the College’s newsletter for the campus community; it’s gone… digital. 

Launched before 1970, the eight-page monthly publication has been offered as an electronic download, a PDF file, from the College’s website, www.cse.edu, since March 2004. Once an issue was printed, the electronic copy used by the printer was uploaded to its special section on the Web, www.cse.edu/mortarboard. Starting this September, Mortarboard will now exclusively be offered in an even more flexible electronic version, delivered each month right into your email inbox and available anytime on the Web at the same web address.

“We have been considering this move for a few months. In its new digital format, Mortarboard will still be composed of the same great content, but it will also allow the Office of Communication and Marketing staff to produce even timelier and more interactive coverage of our events on campus with color photos,” says Jeanine Hirsch, CSE vice president of Institutional Advancement.

The Web version of the newsletter is supported by the same blogging application used by Yahoo! Inc. for its corporate blog, WordPress. “We decided to use this application, because our Web Editor recommended it,” says Donna Lindemeyer, director of Communication and Marketing at CSE. “She explained it was a great solution to publish our newsletter while automatically optimizing the articles for search engines, allowing Web users to browse the archives by categories matching their own interests and generating news feeds for people using RSS readers such as Bloglines.com,” adds Ms. Lindemeyer.

While the old masthead of the print version remains at the top of the new digital one, it will be upgraded as well in the next couple of months. “We wanted the transition to be as smooth as possible. When people get the email newsletter or see the Web version, they will immediately make the connection with the print issue they read last May,” says Ms. Lindemeyer.

Other changes are in the plans. Thanks to the flexibility of the digital version, Mortarboard might soon include more than just text and photos. Audio and video segments – recorded while researching stories – could easily be integrated in its Web version. The resulting features would give a great experience for the campus community members, while providing media reporters with even more reasons to cover the College’s news and events.