George Mason University last week announced the launch of two new tools that will automate the process for renewal, promotion and tenure (RPT) and help faculty members better connect with their Mason colleagues.
Mason’s Faculty Activity and Collaboration Tools (FACTs) investment will streamline the administrative process for unit and college reviews, enable faculty members to more easily find colleagues with complementary research interests, and facilitate compliance reporting related to funding and accreditation.
Faculty training sessions for the tools, called RPT (for Renewal, Promotion and Tenure) and F-180 (Faculty-180), will begin in the spring and last throughout 2020.
“The whole system of being able to process tenure and promotion cases in electronic form and a more convenient way, and also allowing faculty to essentially over time document your professional accomplishments in this way, is really something that we’ve been trying to do for a very long time,” Mason Provost S. David Wu told the 50 or so faculty members on hand for a kick-off event in the Johnson Center Cinema on Oct. 16. You can watch the presentation and demo here.
RPT is secure paperless content management system that will automate existing workflow processes around promotion and tenure in a unified platform and eliminate the need for duplicative submissions, saving faculty time and hassle.
“As we continue to mature, the need to invest in tools that facilitate the work of our campus community and faculty becomes more and more critical,” said Kim Eby, executive sponsor and chair of the Mason FACTs executive leadership team.
Faculty-180, a searchable single-source database, could lead to more multidisciplinary collaboration and curriculum development. Shared information in the database will be able to integrate with faculty profiles on the Mason website to ensure more current online content. The database also will include information on the hundreds of adjunct professors at Mason whose achievements and profiles have not been as well documented.
“That’s a whole community of expertise that we haven’t really had access to in a strategic way,” Eby said.
The university is partnering with Washington, D.C.-based higher education technology company Interfolio, which had representatives on hand at the kick-off event to walk faculty members through a demo of RPT and F-180. The University of Pennsylvania, Northwestern, New York University, UCLA, Tulane and Florida International are among other Tier 1 universities that have worked with Interfolio.
After an extensive testing period for the new products, Eby would like to have both tools fully operational by spring 2022, when Mason is up for accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.