Tested Social Justice site (based on UVic templates) in IE8. Certain aspects that worked in IE7 fail in IE8. Added <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7;FF=3;OtherUA=4" /> which addressed the immediate problem. Of course, it also means that the templates can't take advantage of features in IE8 that are either absent or badly implemented in IE7.

Tested the medieval studies test site in www-dev of their account and it was OK.

Also had a couple of emails with the Web Development office and got the latest version of their templates (which included the meta tag) and put on their list to be notified of future modifications to the templates.