Monmouth University Department of Marketing and Communications web developers Tryon Eggleston, director of digital communications, and Steven Graboski, full stack developer and computer science graduate student, recently presented at the Digital Collegium 2025 Annual Conference in Grand Rapids, MI. Their presentation, “Don’t Make Me Wait: How We Made Monmouth.edu One of the Fastest Sites in Higher Ed,” won a best-in-category award at the conference.
Eggleston and Graboski shared both easy-to-implement techniques and advanced concepts and strategies for building a website that loads quickly for its users, citing benefits including ease of browsing as well as higher rankings on search engines.
“People expect quick, seamless experiences online, and if your site lags, they won’t stick around,” said Eggleston. “We’ve spent years figuring out what works to keep our site fast, and it’s made a real difference in how users access and engage with monmouth.edu.”
Monmouth.edu often ranks at the top of SpeedyU, which evaluates college and university websites based on their performance in Google Lighthouse audits. Monmouth’s site consistently earns top scores on SpeedyU metrics—including performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO—and is currently ranked as the No. 1 site in the Northeast category.
Attendees of the Digital Collegium conference used a ranking scale to evaluate presentations, which included online and in-person workshops and posters. Conference organizers then awarded prizes for each presentation category with winners presenting a second time to close the conference.
“It’s challenging to talk about a subject as technical as web development, especially in a way that’s appropriate for a conference: entertaining, easy to understand, but informative nonetheless,” added Graboski. “When the session ended, and I saw how enthusiastically our audience applauded, I knew Tryon and I nailed it.”
Digital Collegium (formerly HighEdWeb) is a professional community dedicated to advancing higher education through digital innovation. It connects designers, developers, marketers, strategists and leaders in higher education to drive progress within their institutions and across the field.
