| Approved by the: |
Faculty Senate - April 3, 2008
Administration - May 13, 2008*
Board of Regents - no action required
* The University would clearly benefit from a system to identify, store, and track faculty and staff activity and expertise. In fact, this item currently appears on the University's 6-Year IT Plan and is currently in the planning and development stage which involves ensuring alignment, assigning a sponsor/champion, evaluating the financial impact, and determining the design, integration, and the day-to-day management processes that will be needed to support such a system for the University. The University has asked the Vice President and Chief Information Officer for this information to determine how it should be considered for future action.
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Resolution
on the Faculty Expertise Database
MOTION
1:
The
University of Minnesota should adopt an integrated software system that serves
as a comprehensive repository of University faculty and staff activity and
expertise. This system should include the features of an expertise database
while supporting annual activity reporting, the promotion and tenure process,
and other relevant reporting functions. As an expertise database, this system
should allow students and colleagues in and out of the University to quickly
find information. Elements essential to such a system include:
•
The ability to import appropriate existing information from existing Enterprise
systems.
•
Active involvement of faculty, departments, and colleges, with central
administration for development of a flexible and robust structure to support the
different needs of the various disciplines and units.
•
Careful construction of security measures to protect private, sensitive, or
proprietary data.
• A
mechanism to assure timely updates to the data.
•
Investment for training to use the system and for ongoing user support.
• A
user-friendly interface and a variety of avenues for data entry, expertise
searches, and report generation.
Other
considerations to maximize the effectiveness of the system may include
integration with the grants management system to allow for easy assembly of
bio-sketches and other reports, the ability to create curricula vitae, and the
capacity to compile departmental/collegiate/university-wide
reports.
Approved
March 3, 2008, by the Research Committee
Approved March 4, 2008, by the
Information Technologies Committee
Approved March 11, 2008, by the Faculty
Affairs Committee
MOTION
2:
Any
new expertise database should include the capacity to be mined for information
for the purposes of creating grant management documents across the
University.
COMMENT:
The
Senate Research Committee supports the creation of the expertise database but
believes that it will be maximally helpful to the faculty if can also serve as a
mechanism to speed up the preparation of grant-management documents (reports,
applications, etc.).