2006 Campus Technology Innovators: The Web
TECHNOLOGY AREA: THE WEB
Innovator: University of Michigan
UM’s MAYBAUM: Providing truly
user-friendly website building tools.
Challenge Met
In 1998, the most common request from University
of Michigan Medical School faculty
was for a system to help them build unique
websites and simple databases, flexible
enough to let them express their creative
scholarly work. “At just about any university
that you can name, if a person needs to make
a website or database for his own unique, creative
purposes, he is given conventional web
space, or access to a MySQL/PHP server, and
that’s about it,” says Jonathan Maybaum, professor
of pharmacology and former director
of academic IT at the University of Michigan
Medical School. Maybaum set out to provide
something much better, and thus the
UM.SiteMaker project was born.
With UM.SiteMaker,
users can build their own unique database-driven
websites and web applications—through a simple webpage, requiring no
knowledge of SQL or traditional database
administration. “People love the system’s
flexibility,” says Maybaum. “It is used for all
sorts of purposes, including not only the
obvious ones like teaching and research, but
also recruitment, support of academic programs,
student organizations, and public
relations.” There are now more than 5,000
websites published by faculty, students,
and staff from all over the university, using
UM.SiteMaker.
Perhaps the most telling aspect of
UM.SiteMaker’s popularity in the UM community
is that the last several rounds of development
have been funded by contributions
from university units (schools, colleges,
departments). “Financial support is a very
sincere form of recognition around here!”
says Maybaum.