Faculty Scholarship Collection and Reporting Improved Process

Abstract

A team of deans, faculty, librarians, and staff collaborated to re-engineer a law school’s faculty scholarship collection and reporting process. The team assessed and documented the existing process and benchmarked externally as well as within the university. Data and systems were thoroughly inventoried. Using the gathered information and aligning efforts with pre-defined success criteria stakeholders were engaged to design a solution. The final process leveraged web-based technologies, clearly defined roles and responsibilities, added a new role, and refined the communication plan. The result is a more efficient and effective process to capture and re-distribute faculty scholarship which is important to advancing the university’s goals.

Keywords

Faculty scholarship, process, project management, marketing, higher education

Session

This session details an initiative to overhaul an existing, fragmented faculty scholarship reporting process. The intended goals of the initiative were to create an enhance process that was more accurate and efficient in presenting faculty scholarship in the school’s varied output and reporting channels.

The Duquesne University School of Law faculty scholarship reporting process was previously a widely distributed and complex situation involving many faculty and staff. This hampered scholarship reporting and the associated benefits. Scholarship reporting is important because it impacts the school’s stature and enrollment as positive peer assessments may help with the school’s ranking and prospective students often select schools to attend based on faculty’s scholarship and other achievements.

The team was challenged with developing a process that would; simplify reporting for faculty, be more efficient, present scholarship to the public more quickly, and display scholarship content elements in a consistent manner. The team gathered background information from four other Duquesne University colleges, i.e., School of Business, School of Education, School of Health Sciences, School of Liberal Arts, and the Gumberg Library via an email questionnaire. This survey information was referenced while designing the enhanced process. The team also considered the various outputs for the scholarship, including the public website and social media, Sedona, SSRN, Selected Works, etc., and compiled all of the data points required for each system, totaling thirty-five unique data types in all.

A new process was developed that considered and included the many variables so the information could be gathered and manipulated more efficiently. Ultimately, the team was able to design an inclusive electronic form that faculty can use to input scholarship once and have the information manually populated through several parallel systems and workflows. The data from the sophisticated, conditional electronic input form is distributed automatically to the appropriate team members. The team members involved in the process were realigned to better utilize existing skills and workloads and a faculty scholarship editor was designated.

Additionally, the School of Law website was modified to better present the scholarship information, guidelines were developed for the consistent presentation of data, and a thorough review of all faculty scholarship information in all of the relevant systems is now underway.

The new process rollout was supported with a presentation to faculty and staff, a diagram of the process design, and a revised communication plan to facilitate adoption. The team provided information and materials on the new process to the schools that participated in the survey and the library so that they too may benefit from the team’s efforts.

Attendees of my session with come away with the following competencies;

• An understanding of the critical milestones required to effectively manage the advancement of a project of this nature,
• An understanding of the work flow key personal necessary to support a faculty scholarship promotion process,
• An ability to state the necessary technologies required for such a project,
• And an ability to describe the probable challenges and key considerations that should be taken into account.

The session will provide value to attendees of all experience levels and technological competencies. A session attendee will walk away with a better understanding of how to best build or improve on a faculty scholarship promotion structure.