Case Study
Iowa Governor's STEM Advisory Council
The Iowa Governor's STEM Advisory Council coordinates statewide STEM education initiatives across PreK-12, higher education, and industry. Their original 2013 website had become dated and could not be viewed on tablets or mobile devices. eWay served as development partner alongside a local agency to rebuild the site on Drupal with Bootstrap responsive design, custom content types for News and Media Releases, an event calendar, a digital resource center, and an editor-driven CMS so the council's communications team could publish without developer involvement.
- Industry
- Government
- Platform
- Drupal
- Services
- Drupal Redesign + Custom Development
- Engagement
- Project-based
Client Snapshot
About Iowa Governor's STEM Advisory Council
- Scale
- 62 council members spanning higher education, business, PreK-12 education, and state and local government across Iowa
- Website
- iowastem.org
The Iowa Governor's STEM Advisory Council is Iowa's edu-nomic development initiative to invigorate the PreK-12 talent pipeline toward STEM careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
The council brings together 62 members from higher education, business, PreK-12 educators, and state and local government officials. Together they conceive of STEM-specific programs, events, and resources for Iowans, including the STEM BEST (Businesses Engaging Students and Teachers) program, the STEM Scale-Up program, and teacher externships across the state's STEM regions.
The council's website is the primary information channel for educators, businesses, students, and the broader public who engage with STEM programs and resources across Iowa.
The Challenge
A 2013 council website that needed a complete ground-up redevelopment.
The Iowa Governor's STEM Advisory Council brings together 62 leaders from higher education, business, PreK-12 education, and state and local government to invigorate Iowa's STEM talent pipeline. The council conceives, funds, and runs STEM-specific programs, events, and resources for Iowans.
The council's website, developed in 2013, had become dated. It could not be viewed properly on tablets or mobile devices. Navigation was clunky. Essential features that the council had grown to need (an events calendar, a digital resource center, a blog) were not part of the original site.
The council also needed a content management system that would let the communications team update website content without involving developers. They decided to completely overhaul the site and rebuild from the ground up with responsive design, modern features, and an editor-driven CMS at the foundation.
What was failing
Original 2013 site did not render properly on tablets or mobile devices
Clunky navigation that did not match how visitors actually used the site
Missing essential features (event calendar, resource center, blog)
Content updates required developer involvement
No editor-driven CMS so the communications team could not work independently
The Solution
Drupal redesign with Bootstrap, custom content types, and editor-driven content management.
eWay served as the development partner on the rebuild. A local agency led graphic design, information architecture, and content strategy. Together the team rebuilt the Iowa STEM website on Drupal as a responsive, mobile-friendly site with custom content types for the council's specific publishing needs. The communications team could update every section directly through Drupal's admin without developer involvement.
Complete Drupal redesign and redevelopment from the ground up, replacing the 2013 site
Bootstrap-based responsive UI optimized for tablets and mobile devices alongside desktop
Information architecture and navigation restructured around how the council's actual audiences use the site
Event calendar for council programs, member events, and announcements
Custom Drupal content types for News and Media Releases
Digital Resource Center for links and documents with search-optimized indexing for educators, businesses, and the public
Blog for ongoing content updates and council announcements
Editor-driven CMS so the council's communications team could update content without developers
Architecture
A glimpse of the stack
CMS
Drupal with custom content types
Framework
Bootstrap (responsive baseline)
Backend
PHP and MySQL
Custom
Event calendar, Digital Resource Center, News and Media Releases content types
The Outcome
A responsive, editor-driven Drupal site that served the council's mission.
Responsive across every device
The Bootstrap baseline ensured the council's website rendered cleanly on tablets and mobile devices where the previous site had failed to display properly. Visitors could navigate, read, and engage with content from any screen size.
Editor-driven content management
The council's communications team could update events, news, media releases, blog posts, and resource center entries through Drupal's admin without developer involvement. Content stayed current with how the council actually worked.
Search-optimized resource center
The Digital Resource Center housed council documents, links, and references in a structured, search-optimized format. Educators, business partners, and the public could find resources directly rather than navigating through pages of document attachments.
Navigation that matched the audience
Information architecture was redesigned around the council's actual audiences, including educators, businesses, students, and partners, rather than around the council's internal organizational structure.
The Iowa Governor's STEM Advisory Council's redeveloped Drupal website served as the council's primary digital channel, combining custom content types, an integrated event calendar, a digital resource center, and a blog into a single coherent platform that the council's communications team could manage independently from day-to-day developer support.
Common questions about this engagement
What buyers ask before engaging us on a project like Iowa Governor's STEM Advisory Council
What was the development partnership model?
Three parties worked together. The Iowa Governor's STEM Advisory Council was the client, with the council's communications team driving requirements and content. A local agency led the graphic design, information architecture, and content strategy. eWay was the technology and development partner: turning the agency's design and IA into a working Drupal site with Bootstrap responsive front end, custom content types, and the editor-driven CMS the council needed.
Why Drupal for a state council website?
Drupal handles structured content well, supports custom content types out of the box, and lets non-developer editors manage every section of the site through its admin interface. For a council with multiple content streams, including events, news, media releases, blog posts, and a resource library, Drupal gave a single coherent platform rather than a stack of disconnected tools. The editor-driven workflow was non-negotiable for a communications team that needed to publish without developer involvement.
What is the Digital Resource Center?
A structured library of council documents and links. Each entry includes searchable metadata so educators, businesses, and the public can find resources by topic rather than scrolling through page-after-page of attachments. The library is part of the Drupal site rather than a separate tool, so editors manage resource entries through the same admin where they manage the rest of the content.
Why was responsive design a priority?
The original 2013 site predated the mobile-first era and did not render properly on tablets or mobile devices. By the time of the rebuild, a substantial portion of the council's audience was reaching the site from phones and tablets. Responsive design was a baseline requirement for the rebuilt site rather than a nice-to-have. Bootstrap provided the responsive baseline for the redesigned UI.
What was eWay's role versus the agency's role?
The agency owned the visual identity and the information architecture. eWay owned the technology implementation: Drupal, custom content types, Bootstrap front end, the event calendar, the resource center, and the editor-driven admin. The council managed content and program work. The model is common for higher-education and government engagements where a marketing or branding agency leads design and a technology partner like eWay leads implementation.
Related Case Studies
Other engagements you might want to see
Government · Drupal · Custom Modules
Custom Drupal Site, Custom Modules, and Multi-Year Platform Operations
The Employees' Retirement System of Rhode Island (ERSRI) provides retirement, disability, and survivor benefits to state employees, public school teachers, judges, state police, and participating municipal employees. eWay built the editor-driven Drupal site, two custom Drupal modules (an events calendar and a webform engine) that did not exist as pre-built options, and continues to operate the platform end to end through ongoing managed operations and major Drupal version upgrades.
Higher Education · Drupal · Search
Drupal Search, Content Modeling, and UI Enhancements for a Liberal Arts College
Simpson College, a private liberal arts institution in Indianola, Iowa, runs its public website on Drupal. eWay restructured the search and content modeling layers so academic programs, faculty, news, and job listings became discoverable through dynamic content types, faceted filtering, and metadata-aware search. All of it was delivered inside the existing Drupal site without rebuilding the framework or disrupting the editorial workflow.
Higher Education · WordPress · Multisite
WordPress Multisite for a Multi-College Community District
Iowa Valley Community College District operates two community colleges, a business and community solutions arm, and a satellite center across central Iowa. eWay built and hosts the WordPress Multisite that powers all four web properties as a single platform: shared Beaver Builder modules, centralized content reuse, and automated pipelines that pull events from RSS and staff directory data from CSV.
Have a similar environment? Let's talk.
Let's scope a managed engagement for your platform.
Every engagement starts with a platform assessment. We review your current environment, document operational gaps, and recommend a managed operations model sized to your organization.