November 22, 2019 — eCampus News published an article exploring how the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), is modernizing its faculty recruiting and hiring practices to increase faculty diversity.

For example, UMBC formed a STRIDE committee and introduced new university policies. Additionally, the institution adopted Interfolio’s Faculty Search module as part of this process.

Read the article

Article contents © eCampus News

October 3, 2019 — Washingtonian magazine announced Andrew Rosen, CEO of Interfolio, as one of the Tech Titans of 2019. The article recognizes Washington’s top tech leaders—“the most important and innovative people in Washington’s digital economy.” CEO since 2015, Rosen has led Interfolio through the company’s acquisition by Insight Ventures, expanded its international reach with the acquisition of Cambridge-based company Researchfish, and created a holistic Faculty Information System to serve every major lifecycle moment in the life of a scholar. Prior to Interfolio, Rosen was at Blackboard, EAB, and MicroStrategy. 

In response to the award, Rosen states “I am honored to be among these illustrious peers who are leading DC and the nation in their respective technology fields. Thank you to the Washingtonian for their recognition of the importance of education technology and how Interfolio drives innovation in the space.”

Read article

June 27, 2019 — The Hechinger Report published an op-ed on how to close the gap in diversity between an institution’s student body and its faculty, co-authored by Interfolio CEO Andrew Rosen and Autumn Reed, Assistant Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

 The article is grounded in current demographic data of faculty from the National Center for Education Statistics. Rosen and Reed assert that academic leaders cannot simply blame the “pipeline” (defined as a lack of qualified candidates), but rather must make faculty diversity a key priority for their college or university. 

In her current role, Reed focuses on faculty diversity initiatives, and she has been instrumental in putting into place practices and policies for hiring committees in particular. Additionally, UMBC implemented Interfolio’s Faculty Search to make the hiring processes consistent across campus. Interfolio also enables UMBC to “compare the diversity of a job applicant pool for a given opening to that job’s national diversity average.” She speaks to the importance of inclusive job advertisements, as well as the necessity for proactive recruitment.

As Reed and Rosen conclude: “Colleges and uni­versities cannot allow such disparities to exist between the diversity of their student bodies and their faculty. Institutions must continue their efforts to widen access for minority students. But as they do so, they must also remember that providing equitable outcomes for those students requires that they are able to interact with, and learn from, a faculty that is similarly representative.”

Read the article

The Hechinger Report is a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Learn more at hechingerreport.org. Article contents © The Hechinger Report.

Interfolio’s newest product, Lifecycle Management, helps colleges and universities empower faculty throughout their academic careers with digitized faculty roster and advancement system

WASHINGTON, D.C. — November 19, 2019 — Interfolio, architect of the Faculty Information System used by hundreds of colleges and universities worldwide, today announced the release of Lifecycle Management, a product that enables institutions to manage the appointment, workload, and advancement processes for an increasingly complex academic workforce. 

Building on more than twenty years of experience designing advanced platforms to support and enable faculty advancement, Lifecycle Management provides institutions with unprecedented insight into the professional needs and experiences of both full- and part-time faculty—along with tools to support faculty during every phase of their careers.

“Having a system that supports the professional pathways of an active and diverse faculty is an administrative feat,” said Alyssa Kupka, Senior Associate Vice President and chief of staff to the provost at DePaul University. “With Interfolio Lifecycle Management, we see the possibilities of bringing together all of the facets of a faculty member’s journey—from their initial hire, through reviews, as they take on administrative and service appointments, take leave, and apply for and achieve tenure, promotion, and other milestones. When all of these paths come together, under a single system, it is not only powerful but a long-needed investment in the success of our faculty. More simply, when our faculty succeed, our students succeed—and isn’t that the ultimate goal? As administrators, we strive to support our scholars in every facet of their professional journeys and Lifecycle Management stands ready to provide a systematic architecture to help us do exactly that.”

With Lifecycle Management, Interfolio offers a unique approach by providing institutions with a single source for all of the faculty information that exists across campus in siloes. The product offers academic leadership the ability to quickly harness a roster of their entire faculty workforce, with easily-accessible information on contract conversations and commitments, review and promotion cycles, advancement pathways, and other bespoke academic details. Interfolio’s technology also digitizes and embeds each institution’s unique policies and procedures, enabling greater transparency into the typical timelines for review, tenure, and promotion across all academic roles, ranks, and titles. 

“This work is about helping colleges and universities manage the complexities and unlock the full potential of the modern academic journey by aligning the capabilities and potential of faculty with critical institutional priorities,” said Andrew Rosen, CEO of Interfolio. “It enables institutions to streamline arduous data centric processes, centralize typically siloed processes, and reimagine the way that they recruit, retain, and reward faculty excellence. Our research shows these are almost universal goals in an era of heightened expectations, increasingly complex faculty responsibilities, and amplified demands for increased transparency and trust around faculty information.”

The Lifecycle Management product suite is now available as part of Interfolio’s Faculty Information System platform. For more information, visit www.interfolio.com.

ABOUT INTERFOLIO: Founded in 1999, Interfolio is an education technology company based in Washington, DC, that offers the first holistic faculty information system to support the full lifecycle of faculty work—encompassing job seeking, professional accomplishment (in teaching, research, and service), evaluation success (in reviews, tenure, promotion, sabbatical), and beyond. All Interfolio software applications focus on faculty, with workflow tools to support shared governance processes; activity reporting solutions that support accreditation, decision making, and data analytics; and consumer offerings that provide portable, private dossier collection and curation for sharing with academics and others. Working with over 300 clients, Interfolio leads with vision and innovation, always focused on advancing faculty and their institutions. For more information about Interfolio, please contact team@interfolio.com, or visit www.interfolio.com.

A strong brand and consistent hiring processes can help institutions recruit and hire top academic talent, write two University of Texas at Austin administrators.

Henry Tijerina III and Joey Williams talk to Education Dive about their campus’s challenges with faculty recruiting and hiring. Hear about their unique approach—to think like marketers—and how it helped them accomplish their campus’s talent and diversity goals. 

Photo credit: Daderot/Wikimedia