International Education Week (IEW) is a joint initiative of the U.S. Department of State (DOS) and U.S. Department of Education (DOE) that provides an opportunity to celebrate the benefits of international education and exchange worldwide. IEW aims to build support for international educational exchange by encouraging the development of programs that prepare Americans to live and work in a global environment and attract future leaders from abroad to study in the United States. IEW directly supports two of the four pillars in the National Security Strategy: promoting American prosperity and advancing American influence.  Async-Nu Microsystems, as a part of our contract with DOS’ Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), was responsible for developing the official IEW website (https://iew.state.gov).  

Objectives
The main objectives for the IEW website include: 

• To celebrate the benefits of international education and exchange worldwide and encourage others, such as U.S. embassies and institutes of higher education, to take part in the week. 

• To highlight the State Department’s commitment to providing international exchange opportunities. 

• To promote programs that prepare Americans for a global environment and attract future leaders from abroad to study, learn, and exchange experiences. 

Solution
ASYNC-NU built a one-off website for IEW that was not part of ECA’s current Content Management System (CMS) webspace. The site was built within a Drupal™ 9 CMS hosted behind ECA’s websites firewall and replicated to a public location through a custom domain (https://iew.state.gov). ASYNC-NU designed, developed, and maintained the website while also providing other creative deliverables for DOS’ IEW campaign. Campaign deliverables included: IEW website, IEW website banners, social media toolkits, social media content, promotional videos, infographics, and website highlights (blogs).  

Results 
Result 1: ASYNC-NU successfully launched the Drupal™ 9 version of https://iew.state.gov on October 31, 2022. 

Result 2: ASYNC-NU delivered all campaign deliverables on-time and under-budget. 

Result 3: Building the IEW website on Drupal™ 9 made it more usable, accessible, inclusive, flexible, and scalable. 

At a Glance 

Challenges 

• Limited Resources 

• Schedule 

• Budget 

Results 

• Successfully launched IEW website ahead of schedule 

• Provided 100% of IEW Campaign Deliverables ahead of schedule 

• Reduced https://iew.state.gov vulnerability to cyber-attacks