Century America Contract
Southern Utah University
Colin Nimer
Project Site: http://suu.centuryamerica.org/

Mission Statement

The overall goal of my project is to tell the developments of Southern Utah University when it was the Branch Agricultural College during the Great War. I will track the most important developments of the school, the student body, and the campus itself using newspapers, student produced papers, and works by historians. My webpage will be targeted towards Southern Utah University students and citizens of Cedar City, but I also want the site to be accessible to unexpected visitors and recognized as a scholarly work by contemporary historians.

The structure of my website will roughly be as follows: I will have a home page where visitors can access the different sections of the website. Furthermore, each page will have a header with our Century America Project logo and my website’s name. The website will have 7 sections:

1. A “Historical Narrative” section which will tell about the developments on Campus and the community during the War and Epidemic

2. A soldiers memorial—a list of all BAC students who enlisted and served in the armed forces for WWI, along with photos of the memorial in Cedar City

3. Influenza victim memorial—a list of the unfortunate victims of the influenza epidemic In Cedar City

4. A bibliography page

5. An about the project and researcher section

6. Voices of the war section—a collection of the primary documents discussing the war in Cedar City. These will be cross linked to their appearances in the narrative.

7. Women and BAC—there is an interesting narrative concerning the dress code for female students at the BAC and for their position in society. This section will represent the gender roles which existed in Cedar City

These pages will use a variety of tools which I will point out in the next section. However, each page will have links to other pages when references are made or a related topic is brought up. For the “About” page, I will use vlogs to show my research and to demonstrate how I created the web site.

TOOLS

For the theme of the website, I will experiment with the Twenty Fourteen theme, the Attitude theme, and Expound theme. These themes appeal to me because of their clarity and possible formatting. I will select a format based on its visual appeal and organization.

I will look to incorporate SUU’s current colors in the website as the site is meant for students of SUU; the use of the school’s color will appeal to them. For plugins, I will use Youtube to share my vlogs, any plugin to share images on (I will try to use jpeg images as those are a common file type), and the Timeline JS for my school’s timeline and national history timeline. The timeline will be included either on the home page or on the “overview” of the narrative section.

For my vlogs, I will be using the OpenBroadcasting Software to capture my computer screen and record me. For audio entries (voices of the war) I will use my P11 Headset to record my voice to guarantee the best sound quality I can provide.

TIMELINE

My timeline for completing this project will be based on completing a specific section (or two) per week.

March 7th: Create Theme, Welcome Page, and Links to other site sections. This is when I will have every page created to and organized, but not filled with content; think of it as laying down the blueprints. Also, send in pictures to Jack for representative images.

March 14th: Complete the narrative focus on the BAC’s first early years and the outbreak of the War. Complete the JS Timeline. Send in key dates for UMW group’s timeline.

March 21st: Complete the narrative of the America joining the war and the Influenza Epidemic, creating both memorial pages for this. Contribute to “the voices of the great war” section as well.

March 28th: create the about page with vlogs, images of primary documents I used, and an online bibliography of resources I have used. Create a “Woman and the BAC page” if I find significant information on the matter.

April 4th: First Draft Due

April 24th: Final draft due. From the first draft to the second draft, I will expand, edit, and reorganize sections based on feedback from Pearson and McClurken. I will add any additional images or documents I find as I continue to research the BAC. This is the revising and master stage.