For higher education leaders, data about faculty is critical to decision-making. Institutions need to set strategic priorities that inform appointments, promotions, and assignments based on accurate and reliable information. But in a 2024 survey administered by Interfolio and the Higher Education Recruitment Consortium (HERC), more than half (58%) of respondents reported that collecting and managing faculty data has become more challenging in the last two years.
Faculty data is a shared responsibility that needs to be accessible, easy to manage, and useful to the people who are making decisions about academic staff. In short, it should work for institutions, not create work. A strong data governance foundation is an essential starting point.
Why Data Governance Matters in Higher Ed
“Data governance” is a broad term that refers to the structures, processes, and policies that organizations put in place to make sure their data is high-quality, consistent, and accessible to the people who need to use it. In a higher ed context, data governance frameworks are essential to achieving institutional accountability and continuous improvement.
If an institution has a strong data governance framework in place, stakeholders across the institution are better prepared to perform these essential faculty processes. For example, if a business school dean wants to plan for upcoming faculty reviews or an administrator wants to understand academic staffing needs across the institution, they will both be able to find the information they’re looking for and trust that it’s accurate and up to date. Thus, both will be in stronger positions to make decisions that benefit faculty and the institution as a whole. But without that framework, this information may be hard to track down or access. The business school dean might find that their data doesn’t match the administrator’s if they obtained information from different sources. In an extreme scenario, faculty data security may even be compromised.
Fortunately, there are solutions that can help higher education institutions establish and maintain effective data governance practices. Interfolio Lifecycle Management is designed to be a single source of truth about faculty and career appointments, with robust capabilities that help decision-makers access, understand, and act upon key data about scholarly career milestones from appointment to retirement.
Data Governance in Practice
How are institutions using Lifecycle Management to support decision-making? I have heard from faculty and administrators at institutions across the country about how Lifecycle Management helps them answer important questions, including:
- “Which of my faculty are up for review in the next quarter?” Lifecycle Management helped them anticipate promotion opportunities in order to prepare for staffing on committees and turnover in roles.
- “What is the sabbatical status of my faculty member?” Department heads used Lifecycle Management to see where faculty were on their sabbatical timeline, determine that faculty were going through the right procedures before taking sabbatical, and ensure there is proper coverage for affected departments.
- “What historical appointments have my faculty members held?” Lifecycle Management can be especially helpful when gathering information about faculty who have performed multiple roles within the institution.
- “What is the faculty member’s contractual workload?” Data governance systems can help institutions assess equity as well as performance: Leaders use Lifecycle Management to determine if there’s a fair distribution of labor among faculty among different ranks and demographics, ultimately helping to foster a stronger workplace and protect scholars’ well-being.
Lifecycle Management at Morehouse College
Morehouse, a liberal arts college and HBCU in Atlanta, put many of these use cases into practice in 2023. The college was restructuring and needed a more robust solution to manage data for its 144 faculty. Morehouse decided to make Lifecycle Management the home for its faculty data and hasn’t looked back since.
Morehouse was already using Interfolio Review, Promotion, and Tenure (RPT) when it adopted Lifecycle Management. Rather than creating more work, the addition of Lifecycle Management brought useful integrations that allowed users to initiate events in one platform and update them in another, with data automatically transferring between both platforms. Throughout, Lifecycle Management remained the single source of truth from which leaders could make informed decisions and measure institutional success.
Institutional leaders value the ease with which they can track promotions, appointments, and annual evaluations. Seeing events along the faculty journey mapped out visually has helped administrators ensure data remains accurate, even as it’s being managed and updated by multiple people.
Elements of Strong Data Governance
Ultimately, data governance is about creating a solid structure that not only keeps faculty data updated and secure but also empowers colleges and universities to make decisions that lead to better outcomes for the institution. Lifecycle Management helps colleges and universities create this structure for faculty career and appointment data through a few key steps.
Establish the Framework
Early in the process, high-level decision-makers should decide what components their data governance structure will include—such as templatized career tracks and faculty lifecycle events—and how they’ll set access and permissions so that the right stakeholders have access to the right data. With Lifecycle Management, university teams have the support of Interfolio experts who can help map and build their institution’s unique needs, goals, and procedures in the software.
This careful planning on the front end establishes a strong foundation that will lead to more efficiency and effectiveness in the future. With faculty journey templates in place, for example, automated processes mean that administrators no longer have to manually enter events at each stage in each faculty member’s journey. And knowing that no two faculty members are alike, customizations ensure that everyone follows a standard template while documenting nuanced diversions.
Determine Roles and Responsibilities
With the structure in place, it’s time to determine who will have access to the data governance system, what permissions users will be given at various levels, and how they’ll be trained to use the system effectively.
To help ensure data is accessible to the right stakeholders while remaining secure—and to drive a shared data governance structure—Lifecycle Management includes three different kinds of roles for institutional users:
- Institutional administrators (IAs) set the templates, standards, and processes that govern the entire data system. IAs also manage who has access to the system.
- Unit managers are leaders such as deans or heads of schools who can access data related to all faculty within their purview. They can make changes and customizations on the individual level—such as updating the outcome of a faculty member’s review panel or creating a customized workload or journey based off a template—but they cannot modify lifecycle templates or faculty standards.
- Unit viewers can view faculty profiles and select information but cannot make changes to the data. Certain faculty data, such as salary, is typically restricted so that the unit viewer can’t access it.
Ensure Privacy and Security
Finally, it’s critical to ensure faculty data is secure and sensitive information remains private, and partnering with Interfolio means trusting us with your data—and we take that trust seriously. Interfolio is designed for your institution to enjoy all the benefits of cloud hosting while being fully protected so you and your users can be confident that our services are always secure, reliable, and scalable. While we regularly perform security checks on our Lifecycle Management module, institutions also play an essential role; there should be clear alignment and understanding across campus about what information gets added to the system, where that information goes, and who can view it.
To find out what Interfolio Lifecycle Management can do for your faculty and your institution, schedule a demo today.