CS499 Design Veterans Mentorship Program

Project Requirements:
Develop a Drupal 7 based website to connect US Military personnel leaving
the service and looking to obtain a post-secondary education with veterans who
have completed, or partially completed their degrees. Visitors to the site should be
able to search for a mentor based on:
1. Field of Study/Work Experience
2. Location/University Attended
3. Branch of Military during Service
Searches should return a page with a table of short biographies of registered
mentors with matching criteria, with clearly labeled contact information.
The mentors (and mentees) information will be stored in an SQL database. A
page will also be developed through with mentors and mentees can register
themselves, adding their information to the respective tables in the database. In
order to avoid spamming accounts, a check against the military id will be
implemented to maintain veteran exclusivity.
Text pages will also need to be generated to provide information about the
project, how it works, funding and support, and contact information for the program
administrators.
As an initial project, the site will be hosted on the University of Kentucky
Servers, and will feature only UK veterans. As the project progresses, availability in
the program will be expanded to Kentucky Colleges and Universities, then Nationwide, and then to bases around the world. A server shift may be required at the
higher scopes.
DATA
Data will be stored in two tables in an SQL database; mentors and mentees
Data will consist of the following fields:

Name
Location
Major/Field
Military Branch
Military ID
Contact Information
Mentor or Mentee status

PAGES
Design based on Drupal Theme chosen by the client and in accordance with UK
standards
-

Home Page:
o Short introduction of the project and people/organizations responsible
o Mission statement

o Links to Search, Registration pages

o Link to contact, resources and more in depth program information
Search Page
o Text box for user input of search query.
o Radio or drop down choices for which field to search
o Radio button to choose Mentor or Mentee as desired participant
o Submit button
Search query is sent to php script or drupal module (depending on
available modules) to return all values in SQL Database with matching
query. Only column labeled by provided search fields will be matched
against query.
Search will return data to be displayed on results page
Result Page:
o Statement about number of results found matching query
o Table of returned matches with following information:
Name
Location
Branch of Military during service
Preferred contact
o Link/Button to return to search page (search again option)
Registration page
o Radio button to choose Mentor or Mentee
o Text box for each field:
Military Id
Military Branch
Name
Email contact
Optional Contacts: (currently not finalized with client)
Phone
LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ accounts
Physical address
Field of Study/Major
University Attended/Location
o Submit Button
o Statement agreeing to participate in the program and directions of how to
remove registration in the future (-text needs to be approved by client)
Registration information will be first checked against the possible military
ids. For example, the id field will be check to contain the correct number
and arrangement of alphabetic and numeric characters. Registration will
fail if this field does not match expected input. If the id matches, the
registration information will be added to the appropriate table in the SQL
database.
Registration results
o Page displaying success of write to database
o Instructions on how to remove registration if needed

o Instructions on how to make changes to registration if needed

Contact Page
o Contact information for Veterans Resource Center:
Address
Phone
Fax
Email(s)
Website
Resources Page
o List of resources available on and off campuses (initial focus on UK
resources) available for:
Choosing a field/school
Adjusting to college lifestyle
Continued support for US military after leaving the service
o Connection to the Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) in development
This may be moved to a separate page, rather than part of the
resource page, after the MOOC has been developed and
implemented by the client
Social Media/Forum dependent on final approval from client, which has been
stated to be based on time constraints and initial success of the program.
o Connection to LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+ and other social media pages
may be made on the page
o On page forum to allow peer connections
o Account required for use no anonymous posts

GLOBAL
Page features should be supported by all recent versions of Firefox, Chrome, and
Safari.
Security modules will be installed on drupal site to protect against spamming/bots.
Forums and embedded social media features will not allow file uploading.
Accounts will be required for forum/social media use.
After completion of the Spring 2015 semester, maintenance and support, as well as
further feature implementation will be under the responsibility of the Veterans
Resource Center. As a drupal site, all coding is expected to be self-contained.
SCOPE
By the end of the semester (Spring 2015), the text pages, search feature (by
mentor) and registration feature (for mentors) should be implemented. The program
will be initially limited to only the University of Kentucky.
Initial mentors and their information will be provided by the Veterans Resource
Center at UK. Registration will be made available after initial project is implemented.
Registration of mentees and search of mentee functionality will then be
implemented.

Project will then be expanded to all Kentucky Institutions. Upon success and review
by the client and US Military, project will be opened to all US Post-secondary
education institutions. Further expansion will include availability in US bases and
US-Friendly Foreign Universities with US Veteran attendees.
DOCUMENTATION
An external site has been set up to host all information about this project
development, design and progress.