After months of hard work by the Homepage Review Committee and the UM Homepage Committee, we are introducing our newly designed University of Maryland home page.

The new home page design was "soft launched" from June 2 to August 1, to test the web site and receive feedback from users as we moved toward the final transition (to exclusive use of the new home page) on September 1, 2003.

The first part of the "soft launch" period ran from June 2 to July 1, when communications staff and webmasters across the campus had a chance to provide feedback. Shortly after July 1, after making refinements based on email feedback, we linked to the new design in the Hot Topics area of the then current home page. At that point, students, faculty, staff and alumni were invited to provide their feedback.

We received hundreds of emails and made further adjustments to the new home page design based on several of these suggestions. On August 10, the new design launched as the actual University of Maryland home page. The "old" home page can be reached at http://www.umd.edu/oldUM.

On September 1, the old home page will be archived and the launching of the new Maryland home page will be complete.

We thank all of you who provided us with constructive feedback, so that the new page is as good as it can be.