Tag: Company News

Recap + Day 1: The (Inaugural) 2019 Interfolio Summit

What outcomes should faculty technology provide to colleges and universities? How can they use it most wisely? And where is it going next?

Those were the questions in play at the first-ever Interfolio Summit, held in mid-July 2019 at the Westin City Center in downtown Washington, DC. 

Over 175 individuals representing 80 colleges and universities descended upon Washington, DC for this three-day event offering learning and networking opportunities for anyone who uses Interfolio to manage academic hiring, faculty activity reporting, and professional review workflows in higher education.

Throughout the event, it was clear that the Faculty Information System has an essential role to play in empowering global higher education not only to work more cost-effectively, but also—especially—to eliminate the current pervasive blindspot around academic lifecycle moments like faculty hiring, teaching, scholarship, professional advancement, and service to the institution.

Prologue to the Summit: the Product Advisory Committee

Preceding the Summit proper, we met with the 2019 cohort of the Interfolio Product Advisory Committee (PAC). The PAC is a small, rotating group of faculty affairs, technology, and administrative leaders from 12 academic institutions who consult with Interfolio throughout the year to provide input and reactions to the investments that we’re making in the products.

2019 Product Advisory Committee Meeting

Day 1: Setting the stage

The beginning of the Summit took place on Wednesday afternoon, giving attendees ample chance to get in, get registered, and take stock of the opportunities.

Westin, DC

The Summit kicked off with reflective opening remarks—first from Interfolio founder, president, and chief product officer Steve Goldenberg on the 20-year anniversary of the company’s founding, and next from Interfolio CEO Andrew Rosen on the critical and timely necessity of the Faculty Information System technology category. 

Steve Goldenberg, Chief Product Officer of Interfolio
Andrew Rosen, CEO of Interfolio
Lessons on change management—from those that have done it

Following the opening remarks, and connecting the dots with the 2019 PAC meeting, the very first session of the Summit addressed change management as it relates to higher education faculty technology.

We heard from experienced Interfolio champions at 2019 PAC member institutions UCSD, Vanderbilt, and Tulane, as well as Interfolio Senior Consultant David Schenirer.

“Lessons on Change Management” Panel

For some of the concrete guidance including best practices from the field and notes from these speakers (among others), take a look at our free downloadable white paper, Managing Change When Implementing Faculty Technology.

While the educational programming of that first short day wrapped up, we invited Summit attendees to an entertaining happy hour complete with rooftop views at the Eaton DC.

Eaton, DC – Interfolio clients

For more information on the 2019 Interfolio Summit, check out the other two posts: Day 2: Keynote, client presentations, and a birthday party and Day 3: Success stories, a look under the hood, and a 6-month roadmap.

Research Fish joins Interfolio

We’re excited to announce news that will benefit both the higher education and global research communities: Research Fish, the leading creator of research impact tracking technology, has joined Interfolio. 

Research Fish is a Cambridge, UK-based company that makes it easy for researchers, universities and funders to gather, present, and evaluate the academic, social, and economic impact of their research. In fact, Research Fish is one of the only academic-oriented systems that provides a framework for assessing and evaluating both academic and non-academic impact, which goes well beyond traditional bibliometrics. They have pioneered a systematic and organized methodology for tracking research and reporting impact, and we feel this cohesive, definable approach can be the foundation of a global standard.

By joining forces, Research Fish and Interfolio will provide a comprehensive academic information system to track research, identify impact, and support unprecedented insights into the advancement of research and teaching, allowing researchers, funders, and institutions to make smarter, more strategic decisions. 

Working alongside each other, Research Fish and Interfolio will further augment your ability to articulate the effect your faculty and institution have at the discipline level, as well as on campus, in the community, and in society more broadly.

Background

At Interfolio, we’ve long admired Research Fish as a leader of the research impact space—understanding, as well, the potential for US institutions to see the far-reaching effects of their faculty’s research if they apply a similar model. 

About a year ago, I met with Sean Newell, Research Fish’s CEO, to discuss a potential partnership. We believe research impact has not been prioritized in the US to date because it has been difficult to bring non-academic impacts into consideration with traditional academic impacts, like bibliometrics and other publication-oriented data. Traditionally, research impact has been a hard thing to define, aggregate, and consolidate.

When we met, we realized how many values we share, and how similar our organizations are.

Shared mission

Research Fish and Interfolio’s shared values, culture, and vision make it easy to see how our joined companies might work together to serve funders, research centers, and higher education. 

  • Both companies provide pioneering, scholar-centered technology that helps funders, research organizations, and higher education institutions surface the value and impact of academic work. 
  • Both companies strive not just to help researchers and institutions meet their compliance or reporting needs; we also seek to provide real value to individual scholars and faculty as they build their career and scholarly portfolio.
  • Both companies have a history of trust and expertise within the scholarly community. With a combined 30 years of experience, this partnership unites a community of 700k Interfolio Dossier users and 100k Research Fish users.

Finally, together both companies share a vision to cultivate a global standard for professionalism, diversity, and excellence in higher education information technology and research impact assessment.

Outcomes for you

For Interfolio, the ability to introduce research impact to higher education institutions in the US offers a potentially revolutionary path to documenting the importance of academia on society at a time when colleges and universities are under more pressure than ever from governing stakeholders and the public. 

Equally as important, this partnership will offer individual scholars the ability to document the impact of their research and tell a more complete story of their scholarship to their institution and other stakeholders throughout their career. 

And, to reassure our clients: this news will not impact our current product roadmap or client commitments. The Research Fish team will remain in the UK, continuing to work on delivering their own products and services. If anything, we believe this partnership will further solidify our investment in the priorities that you have reiterated to us: the ability to use academic-centric technology to better tell your scholars’ and institution’s story. 

To answer any questions you have about the partnership, we’re offering a free webinar to our clients at 1pm EST on Thursday September 19th, 2019. We’ve also provided some answers to anticipated questions you might have. Finally, you can also reach out to us at rfquestions@interfolio.com with any specific questions.

GDPR & Interfolio: What You Need to Know

Partnering with Interfolio means trusting us with your data, and we take that trust seriously. Interfolio has designed our technical and information architecture for your institution to enjoy all the benefits of cloud hosting while also being fully protected, so you and your users can be confident that our services are always secure, reliable, and scalable from the beginning.

With the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) launch, we want to take a moment to review our security practices with you and highlight some of the new changes we are implementing to ensure our full compliance with data regulations.

GENERAL DATA PROTECTION REGULATION (GDPR)

GDPR is a significant piece of legislation that is designed to strengthen and unify data protection laws for all individuals within the European Union. The new law applies to any organization processing personal data about individuals who live within the European Union and will go into effect on May 25, 2018.

CURRENT SECURITY PRACTICES AT INTERFOLIO
For years, Interfolio has been earning the trust of all our customers when it comes to data integrity and security—academic institutions as well as individual Dossier account holders. Here are some practices we already have in place:

  • We have a “belt and suspenders” security approach, which provides users with a secure, reliable, and scalable solution. For more information, check out our security overview here.
  • We encrypt data in transit and at rest.
  • We promise to send prompt breach notifications. In line with our current policies, Interfolio will inform you of any incidents involving your users’ personal data right away.
  • We are members of Privacy Shield, a mechanism to help us comply with EU and Swiss data protection requirements when transferring personal data from the European Union.

NEW SECURITY PRACTICES AT INTERFOLIO
Here are some new security practices we have implemented specifically for GDPR compliance:

  • A Data Processing Agreement (DPA) containing the EU Model Clauses, which are industry standard for data safety. This means that Interfolio agrees to protect any data originating from the EEA in line with European data protection standards.
  • Enhanced services to help you be compliant when users request you delete or suppress their data.

For more information on GDPR, visit: https://www.interfolio.com/gdpr/

For more information on our commitment to security, visit: https://www.interfolio.com/security/

Feel free to contact us if you have any specific questions about Interfolio’s technical security measures, or your institution’s particular considerations.

The future of faculty-focused technology

Learn more about the future of higher education technology at our free webinar.

Faculty first

That’s our mission, and we’ve been delivering it for years. But have our colleges and universities?  

Throughout my 20-year career in edtech, I’ve seen a host of higher education institutions attempt to solve or mitigate large challenges with new technology. I’ve watched the evolution of enterprise resource planning systems, student information and CRM systems, learning management systems, enrollment systems, and outcome assessment systems; however, I’ve rarely, if ever, seen institutions focus their attention on faculty.

Given that faculty drive the lion’s share of revenue through funded research and teaching (in the form of tuition); comprise the greatest component of cost in the form of payroll; are responsible for brand, reputation and rank of a university; deliver student success and ultimately completion rates; and are responsible for myriad governance decisions: can colleges and universities continue to afford to not invest in faculty?

Two companies with a history of putting faculty first

Since 1999 we’ve centered our business on scholars, first by helping over 1 million of them apply for scholarly opportunities, and then by assisting over 10,000 faculty hiring, promotion and tenure decisions at higher education institutions. Faculty are the hub of every university, and we make it our goal to provide valuable tools that center around their work and accomplishments, while also helping them to drive their institution’s mission.

That’s why we’re so excited to announce our recent acquisition of Data180, a company founded by two former faculty members that provides a solution for accreditation and faculty activity reporting that’s become vital to the success of higher education institutions.

A sea change in higher education

Interfolio’s combination with Data180 is indicative of the sea change that’s taking place in higher education. Institutions are starting to recognize the need to protect and invest in their faculty, and it’s not hard to see why.

Any strategic initiative or outcome around growth, retention, faculty diversity, reputation, or data (such as accreditation or fair hiring compliance for grant eligibility), lives and dies with the faculty. Unsurprisingly, higher education institutions across cohorts have begun seeking tools within this new must-have category of “faculty technology” to help their faculty be more effective, efficient, and strategic.

Investments in faculty

The faculty-focused investments our clients are making with Interfolio—coupled with their requests to incorporate activity reporting solutions like those provided by Data180—demonstrate the emergence of a “need to have” technology to support faculty throughout their career and provide the institution with never-before-harnessed data.

Both Interfolio and Data180 know that there has to be significant benefit to the faculty in order for a technology to be holistically adopted and useful to everyone at the institution: staff, administrators, deans, and faculty alike. Institutions investing in faculty-centered technology know that if you provide tools to your faculty that actually add value to  their daily work and professional life, they are more likely to want to use them.  As a result, institutions will see more validated and accurate data about the work their faculty do daily to deliver the institutional mission through teaching, research, mentorship, and service.

But what’s most important is that faculty will—finally—receive investment commensurate with their importance, so they can continue to be the driving force behind what makes higher education exceptional.

DATA180 Partners with Process Pathways for Research Data Integration

Content originally published on data180.com. Learn more about Interfolio’s acquisition of Data180 here.

DATA180 is proud to announce a new partnership with Process Pathways, a market leader in web­-based research information management. As part of this partnership, data from the ROMEO Research Enterprise application, the core product offered by Process Pathways, will be integrated with FACULTY180 to provide users with an additional option for managing their research data.

“DATA180 will be partnering with Process Pathways to migrate grant proposal and funding data from the Process Pathways ROMEO Research Enterprise system to our FACULTY180 data hub. We are very excited about the synergies created for our common clients through this collaboration. This effort truly provides smarter solutions for academe,” says L.K. Williams, President and Co-founder of DATA180.

“The call for CV and academic performance management and reporting requires very specific knowledge of teaching, learning, and research activities. Deploying a system that reduces the workload on faculty members is critical. Doing so means integrating with authoritative data sources, fetching the data, and then being able to extract datasets for the creation and routing of performance reviews, along with the difficult-to-manage CV formats for specific funding applications and publications,” states Gordon McDonald, CEO of Process Pathways Inc.

“The team at DATA180 has created a solution (FACULTY180) that accomplishes these tasks and more. After working with the DATA180 integration team at a U13 Canadian university, we were encouraged to look further into the product. We are delighted with what we discovered: an affordable, flexible platform that scales to the needs of small, medium, and large institutions. More importantly, the people behind the product come from academia and have a demonstrated commitment to making even the most complex data consolidations simpler and more accessible for both faculty and academic administrators,” continues McDonald.

For more information about the integration between DATA180 and Process Pathways, please contact DATA180.

For more information about Process Pathways, visit www.processpathways.com.

Announcing our new logo and look!

interfolio-newlogo-blogpost1

Big news! Today, after seventeen years, we’re releasing an updated brand identity, which includes a new logo, colors, and font. You’ll see the new look anywhere we’re out in public, like our website, Facebook, and Twitter; very soon you’ll see it in all of our products, as well. We believe the new look better matches what we’ve become since 1999: a provider of thoughtful technology that modernizes aspects of the work of higher education, while better connecting scholars to each other and their institutions. Continue reading “Announcing our new logo and look!”

Funding Interfolio’s Innovation

Interfolio has just raised an important round of growth funding led by education sector specialists Quad Partners. We’re making ByCommittee an even more effective platform to help faculty focus on their core mission.

Continue reading “Funding Interfolio’s Innovation”

Uniting Students and Researchers with ResearchConnection

Content originally published on data180.com. Learn more about Interfolio’s acquisition of Data180 here.

researchconnection_logo

In an effort to change the way researchers and students connect with each other professionally, a group of students have formed ResearchConnection, an online platform that allows students to search for and apply to research-related jobs and projects at colleges and universities across the country.

Students and professional researchers can easily create a profile on the ResearchConnection web site, which includes identifying the college/university they are affiliated with, their field of research, and degrees held. Users can also upload cover letters and resumes, and list research projects in which they are involved.

Upon creating a personal profile, students can search for research-related jobs and projects using a variety of search terms, including schools, topics, labs, publications, and more. If a match is found, users can apply for the job/project directly from the ResearchConnection web site.

The information in the search results is obtained exclusively from public web sources, university web sites, and any other information provided by universities. In addition, users are encouraged to keep their information up-to-date to ensure their ResearchConnection profile always contains current information.

ResearchConnection benefits colleges and universities by providing them with a database and networking platform for their research community. As users engage on the platform and user data accumulates, ResearchConnection is able to generate analytical reports for university administrators, which assist from budgeting to marketing.

To help bring ResearchConnection to universities, the company has started a student ambassador program. Student ambassadors meet with their school administrators to promote ResearchConnection. Students are able to garner support and have priceless opportunities to develop a network of professional researchers and school administrators.

For more information on ResearchConnection, visit www.researchconnection.com.

Content originally published on data180.com. Learn more about Interfolio’s acquisition of Data180 here.