Colleges and universities have hundreds, and often thousands, of faculty to keep track of. Every faculty member has their own detailed history of accomplishments, from courses taught to research published in academic journals and from grants and funding to awards and recognition. This information is constantly changing. So, how can university administrators keep up?
Many are turning to faculty information systems and, in particular, faculty web profiles to not only track faculty activity but also facilitate research connections and promote accomplishments, elevating the status of the university in the process.
What Is a Faculty Profile?
A faculty profile is a living résumé for faculty members as well as a comprehensive look into their past and present accomplishments. A profile can include a faculty member’s basic biographical information, such as their education and professional experience, as well as details about their teaching, research, publications, grants, and awards.
Creating a system of record for faculty activities is not simply about being organized—it’s about raising the reputation of your institution, highlighting the expertise of your faculty, and even securing future partnerships or funding opportunities.
How Faculty Profiles Contribute to Institutional Success
At the institutional level, faculty profiles are one way to highlight the quality and reputation of your faculty, increasing the visibility of your college or university both domestically and internationally. Institutions with greater visibility are more likely to establish strong partnerships, secure funding, and lead in rankings among peer institutions. Prospective students may also view your faculty profiles when considering which universities they want to apply to.
For faculty members themselves, profiles can play an active role in professional development and networking. Public web profiles that demonstrate a faculty member’s history, expertise, and research interests make their work discoverable to other academics and potential collaborators. An effective faculty profile can expand faculty members’ personal networks and, in turn, the scope of their work.
Faculty are critical to the success of every university. High-quality faculty profiles can play an important role in celebrating their work and accomplishments.
What Makes an Effective Faculty Profile?
An effective faculty profile tells the story of a scholar’s work. It should include basic biographical information and highlight their professional experience and degrees, research output, areas of expertise, and accolades. And above all else, an effective faculty profile must be accurate and up to date.
Faculty web profiles may also include:
- A list of recent publications or an external link to their scholarly works
- The faculty member’s current teaching schedule
- Links to the faculty member’s personal website, CV, affiliated research lab, or other relevant activities that showcase their contributions to the field
Faculty should also have an easy interface that lets them choose what to display on their profile. This includes the ability to hide certain data that may be relevant for other purposes but that they don’t want to display publicly.
Faculty Profile Management: Best Practices
Robust faculty profiles help your institution amplify faculty expertise and attract outside interest, ensuring faculty data is being used for the benefit of all. But for these resources to be effective, they should include a few key attributes.
- Accurate, up-to-date information: High-quality faculty profiles draw from data sources that are automatically populated and refreshed rather than relying solely on a one-time manual data entry.
- Clear showcasing of faculty accolades: A faculty member’s grants, awards, and accolades should be easy to find on their profile page.
- Consistency across the institution: Faculty accomplishments reflect the institutional look and feel; consistency across schools and departments reinforces and strengthens your institution’s branding.
- Reporting and repurposing of data: Faculty profiles contain a wealth of important data relevant to other institutional priorities. This data should be easy to reuse and repurpose for evaluations, reporting, and institutional research.
With homegrown faculty profile solutions, meeting these standards can require hours of manual data entry and verification. Your institution’s chosen solution for faculty profile management should benefit faculty, IT, and administrators—not add to their workload. Interfolio can help.
Enhancing Visibility and Collaboration at the University of Toledo
The University of Toledo started working with Interfolio in 2012. Since then, the university has come to use Interfolio as a central faculty data hub that facilitates online scholar profiles, academic evaluation workflows, collaboration on research and funding, and more.
UToledo’s use of the Interfolio platform is just one example of how modern universities can use faculty information systems to maximize the visibility of their faculty members’ expertise and contributions. Read their full case study.
How Interfolio Can Transform Your Faculty Web Profiles
Your faculty are essential to the success of your institution—so the systems collecting their research, teaching, and service activities must reflect that. Faculty web profiles should be part of a dedicated, searchable “source of truth” that builds your institution’s reputation without taking too much of your faculty’s time.
Interfolio Faculty Activity Reporting (FAR) is the ideal tool for collecting and reporting on reliable information about the work of university faculty. With Interfolio FAR, institutions can maintain a central hub of faculty activity data, save faculty time with scholar-friendly tools to generate CVs and faculty profiles, and produce reports for accreditation, annual reviews, institutional research, and more.
Powered by Interfolio’s unique Data Service, FAR helps your institution maintain faculty profiles that are accurate, comprehensive, easy to use, and automatically updated, empowering faculty members to spend less time writing about their research and more time doing it.
To find out what Interfolio can do for your institution, schedule a demo today.
FAQs
What is the purpose of a faculty profile?
A faculty profile is a comprehensive representation of a faculty member’s education, professional experience, research and publications, awards and recognitions, and other relevant information. It serves as a professional marketing tool for faculty members, facilitates research collaboration, and helps institutions showcase the achievements of their faculty.
What are the components of a faculty profile?
A faculty profile typically includes personal information, education and degrees, professional experience, research and publications, awards and recognitions, and other relevant information.
Why is a faculty profile important for institutions?
A faculty profile can help enhance an institution’s reputation and brand, facilitate recruitment and retention of faculty members, and secure funding and grants.
Why is a faculty profile important for faculty members?
A faculty profile provides opportunities for professional development and recognition, allows for networking and collaboration, and can help secure research and grant opportunities. When profiles are comprehensive and up to date, they can be a significant professional asset for faculty members.
What are some best practices for creating a faculty profile?
Ensure that information is accurate and up to date, use a consistent formatting style for all faculty, clearly highlight accomplishments, incorporate visuals and images such as a faculty member’s photo, and actively maintain faculty data to include the latest outputs and updates.