Grad builds postal Web site

• By CHANTE DIONNE WARREN
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Jun 1, 2009

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Barely a week out of college, Emmalee Antill, 22, stood before postal service executives and explained her user-friendly Web site featuring discussion blogs, calendar events and mail services.

Antill, 22, of Houma, graduated from Nicholls State University in Thibodaux on May 16, after having spent her senior semester completing a classroom practicum to help the Baton Rouge Post Office and its council go global on the Internet, she said.

Antill built the Web site, http://www.gbrpcc.com, for the Baton Rouge Postal Customer Council, a nonprofit organization that helps local businesses efficiently use mailing services. She also created a user guide for the site and trained postal staff on how to update and add pages to the site.

“My big question was, why should people go to this site?” said Antill. She explained her decision to include drop boxes, easy-to-read language, video, blogs, meeting minutes and other helpful tools to pique users’ interests.

Baton Rouge postmaster Carl Karnish gave his nod of approval for the site. “Anybody going on this site will be able to navigate through it easily,” he said, while attending Antill’s presentation Wednesday at the General Mail Facility on Bluebonnet Boulevard.

Antill’s practicum gave her the edge that she would need to cross the hurdle from being a college graduate to becoming an employed graduate, said Windy Rachal, who guided Antill through the practicum.

“These types of projects are critical to keeping our best and brightest in the state,” said Rachal, assistant professor and director of advanced writing at Nicholls State University.

Antill agreed.

“I was nervous about getting a job because of all the doom and gloom you hear about graduates not getting jobs,” Antill said.

When she sent out résumés, Antill’s Web site caught the attention of her new employer, Chand, a transportation equipment management and consulting service in Mathews where she works as a technical writer.

“It wouldn’t have happened if they (postal service) hadn’t taken the risk. They could have hired someone,” she said.

On the Web site, members can blog and e-mail one another, said Judith Brining, Postal Customer Council and customer coordinator, who offered the opportunity to Karnish, after Rachal, who is Brining’s daughter, suggested her student build the site.

The site also provides post office facility office hours and locations of collection boxes; pickup times; and locations of automated postal centers and contract postal units.