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Online Tool Allows USM Faculty to Track Achievements in Research, Teaching, Service

Wed, 11/28/2018 - 10:37pm

University of Southern Mississippi (USM) faculty members are using a new software platform to keep track of their achievements and activities in a way that facilitates use of the information. 

The platform, Digital Measures, was developed by Watermark and customized by the company for the needs of the USM faculty. It allows easier creation of CVs, publication lists, and other self-reports needed for various purposes such as tenure dates, scheduled teaching, promotions, and web profiles, as well as a method for academic programs to complete accreditation reports, among other uses. Faculty members can enter their information once, and then manage the software to use it in a variety of ways.

“Our goal is to save faculty time in these reporting needs,” said Dr. Doug Masterson, senior associate provost for Institutional Effectiveness. “This platform allows them to capture their activities and achievements as they occur, and use them in ways not possible before. Faculty will be able to keep their public web profiles up to date with the information without the need for them to know how to build web pages, and allow them to share their achievements and scholarly activities with a click of a button.”

USM currently has a scholarship celebration report that provides information to University Communications on faculty scholarship and creative activities, so that news stories can be readily composed regarding faculty activity. Also, accredited programs at USM will be able to more easily generate required reports for their accrediting bodies in the correct format, using the information for their units within this system.

Dr. Masterson said efforts are underway to build the faculty web profile component of the platform, along with the proposed new university website, which will empower faculty to keep their public presence up to date with ease.

“We are also working with Watermark to implement the workflow module so that internal reporting processes for faculty can be completely online,” Dr. Masterson said. “Moving forward, faculty will be able to generate tenure and promotion dossiers using the information already contained in the platform, and move that on to the various stages of review in a completely online format, allowing them the ability to know exactly what stage of review their dossiers are in, removing the need to compile physical dossiers.”

For more information, contact Dr. Masterson at douglas.mastersonFREEMississippi.