It is not obvious that there exists much commonality in the left hand navigation that might appear on the web sites of Academic Support departments, because the role and client base of each department varies considerably. However, there are some items that could be considered for inclusion.
- Department Home: this item is being recommended for all Faculties and academic departments. Your readers do need a way to reach or return to your department's home page.
- About [Department]: this item will appear on all Faculty and academic department pages, and will contain information, including contact information, for all the key people in the department.
- Does your department provide services? If so, services would be a logical menu choice.
- Are components of your web site aimed at specific constituencies, such as students, prospective students, alumni? These could also be logical choices for your menus.
Including as many of the above items as are appropriate will help to lead to a reasonably common set of menus across the entire UW web site.