Combining best-in-class technology, data, and services, Interfolio’s Faculty Information System (FIS) supports the entire academic faculty lifecycle from hire to retire. Designed to facilitate faculty processes, the Interfolio FIS allows you to recruit and hire applicants, provide support on career milestones tailored to a faculty’s specific pathway, ensure equity and transparency, and showcase faculty expertise—all through a single integrated platform.
Here’s how Elizabeth City State University, Emory University, New York University, and Tulane University are using Interfolio’s FIS to support their goals. Each institution highlights different elements of our comprehensive FIS, showcasing how the various capabilities benefit academic leadership and faculty—and how powerful our integrated solution is when you bring everything together to support institutional success.
Themes discussed:
- Building Faculty Trust at Elizabeth City State University
- Supporting DEI at Emory University
- Developing Faculty Careers at NYU
- Streamlining Faculty Hiring at Tulane
Building Faculty Trust at Elizabeth City State University
Adopting a digital platform purpose-built for faculty affairs has many advantages. So many, in fact, that Elizabeth City State University (ECSU) is still discovering new ones. One of 16 institutions in the University of North Carolina System, ECSU adopted Interfolio for their annual reviews and faculty lifecycle processes.
“When they were going up for review, our faculty members would complete these heavy notebooks that they would have to carry to different offices,” explained Dr. Farrah Jackson Ward, ECSU’s Provost and Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs. “Faculty reviewers had to check in and check out the notebook, which meant that only one individual could review it at a time. Plus, they had to go across campus to the designated review location. It really was an inefficient use of our faculty’s and administrators’ time,” added Ward. With Interfolio, reviewers can conduct simultaneous reviews. “Faculty have been very satisfied with the new software and process, and it’s decreased the administrative burden,” Ward said.
Since implementing Interfolio, ECSU has improved more than just faculty reviews. “Some of the benefits of Interfolio include securing faculty data as well as enabling transparency into our review process, which promotes faculty trust,” explained Ward. Farrah added that ECSU no longer has to worry about anyone removing documents from a paper review portfolio. Likewise, the electronic records are retained long-term, and the review process is automatically documented, reducing any legal risks.
“We started using it for Teacher of the Year recognitions at both the departmental and university level. And then we started using it for faculty credentialing, and next will be graduate faculty approval. So there’s lots of things that we’ve been able to do with Interfolio because it is such a versatile tool for us.”
Dr. Joy Turnheim Smith
Dean of the School of Education and Business
Elizabeth City State University
Supporting DEI at Emory University
Promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at universities and colleges requires a multi-pronged approach that includes incentivizing faculty activities around DEI. Emory University has discovered how technology makes this easier. A top liberal arts and research university in Atlanta, Emory uses Interfolio to capture and report out faculty DEI activities. Interfolio Faculty Activity Reporting complements their use of Interfolio Faculty Search, Review, Promotion & Tenure, and Lifecycle Management for full visibility into faculty careers.
By using Interfolio for activity reporting, Emory can evaluate DEI progress across the university and report out attainment of goals to deans and the university’s Chief Diversity Officer. “We can see and report what faculty are doing relating to DEI in the Atlanta and Emory communities as well as at the state, national, and international levels,” said Bridget Mullaney, former Interfolio Project Lead in Emory University’s Office of the Provost. Emory University also uses Interfolio to achieve community-wide transparency on DEI progress. “We can highlight DEI accomplishments, but we also bring challenges to light and face them at a university level,” Mullaney added.
The data Emory collects through Interfolio also enables them to continually discover and build upon faculty DEI successes. “One important way to actualize your university’s commitment to DEI goals is to value and treat DEI activities as important factors during faculty evaluation and tenure review,” Mullaney advised. “Interfolio’s integrated faculty information system signals to faculty that their DEI activities matter.”
“One important way to actualize your university’s commitment to DEI goals is to value and treat DEI activities as important factors during faculty evaluation and tenure review. Interfolio’s integrated faculty information system signals to faculty that their DEI activities matter.”
Bridget Mullaney
Former Interfolio Project Lead, Office of the Provost
Emory University
Developing Faculty Careers at NYU
New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development initially adopted Interfolio to enhance their recruitment practices and ensure the school was recruiting the best talent. Within about six months, the entire university expressed interest in the platform. As a result, the institution’s use of Interfolio Faculty Search was expanded to the entire NYU organization, including eighteen schools and colleges across the globe.
“We wanted a system that required minimal effort, saved time for participants, provided easy access to reporting, and allowed the Provost’s Office to be more strategic and intentional in their support of faculty recruitment,” said Michael McCaw, Associate Director of Academic Appointments. “We sought a two-pronged approach: first, provide better support for end users of hiring processes, and, second, leverage data gathered to assist with diversity and equity initiatives. And we believed technology could be a big driver for both.”
Having a comprehensive, coordinated solution for faculty searches paid dividends immediately, providing better reporting on applicant pools and the outreach used to generate those pools. NYU put effort into posting positions in venues that had not been explored before and was able to measure the response therefrom. As a result, the university expanded beyond its traditional sources into social media outlets. They found those outlets helped increase applicant pools by over 25% and improved inclusion and diversity efforts for select positions.
NYU realized there were additional challenges related to key faculty lifecycle workflows, like annual review, promotion, and tenure. Two key issues were the inefficiencies and lack of uniformity involved in the existing manual, paper-based systems. “Seeing the capabilities, success, and potential of Faculty Search got us thinking about pain points related to our review, promotion, and tenure processes,” said McCaw of these concerns. Interfolio Review, Promotion & Tenure (RPT) provided a digital solution with transparency and accountability for stakeholders—all under one roof. As McCaw noted, “The new system gave our faculty relief to know they only had to worry about logging in.”
The opportunity to use one system for hiring and evaluations helped faculty to see Interfolio as a resource to support key moments in their careers, which created buy-in. McCaw explained that this consistency “really helped with user acceptance and adoption.”
“To be able to have faculty buy-in to a system which impacts important milestones and processes for them is huge—and I think it’s a testament to the kind of care and quality Interfolio puts into their products.”
Michael McCaw
Associate Director of Academic Appointments, Office of the Provost
New York University
Streamlining Faculty Hiring at Tulane
Tulane University recognized a need for a system to consolidate many faculty-related processes, including decision workflows like hiring, tenure, promotion, and annual review in 2014. Tulane, like many other Interfolio partners, deployed Interfolio in a measured fashion across campus. The institution initially adopted Interfolio for hiring as well as faculty promotion and tenure reviews. In 2018, they replaced their incumbent activity data system with Interfolio.
Tulane, from the outset, had the goal of prioritizing the faculty member’s experience. First, they streamlined the process for faculty hiring committees by collecting all feedback on a candidate (faculty interviews or faculty review of a candidate’s academic qualifications) into Interfolio. Second, they designed a new order of operations for systems to talk to each other so that a new hire’s first interaction with the HR system was during onboarding—instead of multiple touchpoints with multiple systems during hiring. Tulane increased efficiency, ensured no packets were lost, and made hiring easier for all involved.
With this process underway, Tulane realized that any routine faculty-related process where paper had to be tracked across campus could be an additional use case for using Interfolio. Plus, they could bring additional campus units into the fold and adapt to their needs. For example, Tulane worked closely with their School of Medicine to track changes as faculty switched between tenure, clinical, and research career paths.
As the use and adoption of Interfolio grew over the years, Alysia Loshbaugh, AVP for Business Relationship Management, found that “anything decided by committee” could be made more convenient and consistent by leveraging Interfolio RPT. These innovations did not take place overnight, but with a progressive mindset and deep partnership with Interfolio’s Professional Services team, Tulane was able to design a more trusted and streamlined faculty experience with hiring, review, promotion, tenure, sabbatical, and accolade assignment.
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