A retirement reception for Bob Crisler, director of the Digital Experience Group within University Communication and Marketing, is 3 to 5 p.m. Dec. 11 at the Wick Alumni Center.
Crisler joined the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, his alma mater, in 1992 as a graphic designer with Publication Services. In 1997, he transferred to Public Relations, with a promotion to lead designer for Nebraska, the alumni magazine, and major events. After suggesting the need for a dedicated web role in 2000, he transitioned to become the university’s first — and at the time only — full-time web developer.
In 2002, Crisler and his small team founded one of the first web communities in higher education, the UNL Web Developer Network, which today has a membership list of nearly 500 faculty and staff.
In 2007, with the backing of then-chancellor Harvey Perlman, Crisler led UNL to become the first large institution to converge around a single look and feel for the web, introducing in that year a common branding and code foundation for the university’s websites and public-facing web apps. As part of that project, a robust and active programming and infrastructure role emerged in the web team, which led to a diverse ecosystem of content-publication applications. These include the main UNL content management system, which hosts nearly 800 websites, supported by an array of single-purpose apps, including UNL Events, MediaHub, Maps, Directory and GoURL (now the short-URL service at UNL, UNMC and UNK). Services within UNL’s CMS includes the custom platform that publishes and hosts newsrooms for units university-wide, including Nebraska Today.
In 2022, UNL became the first large university to support dark mode across its websites, honoring the viewing preference of about a third of web users. In 2024, the team began integrating artificial intelligence into its apps with the release of MediaHub AI Captioning. And, in 2025, the DXG team and WDN community completed a major transition in UNL CMS to a robust no-code authoring environment.
Today, unl.edu and its 800 sites serve as an authoritative source for information about the university, delivering about 150 million pages annually to tens of millions of users from nearly every nation on Earth.
During his career, Crisler has transformed UNL’s web presence, helping set a high standard for excellence in university websites.
The reception is free and open to the public. Remarks are scheduled for 4 p.m.
