Faculty Research Labs

The Academic Health Center web team does not support stand-alone websites for individual faculty labs. If a faculty lab needs a web presence, we suggest the following solutions.

Include on the parent unit's website 

Create a "Research labs" section under the larger "Research" label on the parent unit’s website.

Examples

URLs

URL would be: siteurl.umn.edu/research/research-labs/lab-full-name

Existing URLs can be redirected to this page. For promotional use you could request a short URL that redirects to this page through z.umn.edu/labname. 

Content

The content for a research labs section might include: 

  • Overview and photo
  • Research focus or research projects
  • News and publications (key publications and presentations)
  • Our team
  • Related resources

Since research findings are of high interest to external audiences, labs should consistently place publications, new findings, etc. online, and communicate research information regularly through appropriate venues. Consider regular updates from the lab—progress on animals, studies, experiments, funding, etc. Other pages on this site (e.g., research page, news) may be able feature this information—communicate your updates with the site's web point person and with communications staff who might promote through social media and other channels.

Drupal Lite or Google site

Another option is to ask the faculty member to create their own Drupal Lite or Google site for the lab. 

If this solution is used, be sure to link to it from faculty bio page and other relevant areas, and vice versa. A simple way to cover affiliations is include a statement with all the unit names linked: "The XYZ lab is part of the XYZ department in the XYZ college, in the Academic Health Center at the University of Minnesota."

Example: Neuroscience main research page links directly to labs

Resources

Google Sites exception for Academic Health Center (AHC) employees

Before creating a Google Site, AHC employees will need to complete an exception form. If the Google Site will have multiple editors, those individuals will also need to complete an exception form. Anyone will be able to view a public Google Site. If you wish to create a Google Site that is only accessible to specific people, all of those people who are AHC employees will need to request an exception.

More about Drupal Lite, Google sites, and other web solutions

A combination of the two

A third option is to implement a combination of incorporating faculty lab content into their parent unit’s site and the faculty having their own site.

Content

Capture the key public facing info in the research lab page part of the official website, and then the lab can create their own site using Drupal Lite, Google Sites, or another web solutions for graduate student hours and other info that is less public facing.

Web Resources