Provost’s Faculty Tracking Software to be just like Concur, but for Tenure and Promotion

What could go wrong? You’d think that after disasters like Concur, shared services, centralized purchasing, and Commencement, our Johnson Hall leadership would step back for a moment and think about what they’re trying to do. Nope. As a wise women once sang,

I ain’t no psychiatrist, I ain’t no doctor with degrees
But, it don’t take too much high IQ’s 
To see what you’re doing to me

Interim Provost Janet Woodruff-Borden and Interim VP for Academic Affairs Karen Ford have attempted to deceive the faculty and Senate by telling us that the impetus for the this latest scheme is a desire to better account for service, or make it easier for them to nominate faculty for awards.

They have refused to share the draft RFP to provide for faculty input, but the final version is now posted, and it’s obvious that the administration wants a system that will give our Johnson Hall leadership the ability to prepare real-time reports on what faculty are doing, down to the micro-acheivement.

Faculty, of course, will be tasked with the burden of inputting it all. RFP here. A snippet:

1) Data and System

1. a)  Describe the solution’s ability to pull baseline information from internal UO data systems includingBanner and the Operational Data Store (ODS) to identify and report:
   i) Promotion and tenure eligibility including years of credit for service ii) Promotion and tenure clock information
   iii) Other review eligibility and timelines
   iv) Leave tracking including sabbatical
   v) Endowed positions
   vi) Administrative appointments
   vii) Joint appointments
   viii) Merit-based information
   ix) Retention-based information
2. b)  Vendor must be able to provide a 60-day, onsite live trial environment “sandbox” (for configuration and usability) prior to an agreement to purchase.
3. c)  Describe the solution’s ability to scan/scrape/import CV data for a lookback of 5+ years (preferably up to 30+ years) from various sources and diverse file formats. This includes describing the solution’s ability to reallocate/reorganize/recategorize CV information.
4. d)  Describe the solution’s ability to allow for review, verification, and modification processes of faculty activity data. This also includes the solution’s ability to lock specific data fields (e.g., tenure timelines should only be editable for certain roles) to prevent modification, the ability to allow for modification annotations to be made within the system and available to administrators, and the ability to have context added separate to the data itself (e.g., a notes field).

5. e)  Describe the solution’s ability to designate role accounts and access information to various levels of administration, faculty, and staff. This should include information on the types of data viewable in various roles, reports and metadata viewable in various roles, and workflow processes viewable in various roles. Discuss if these roles can be configured according to our UO structure and needs.
6. f)  Describe the solution’s ability to import data into a standardized CV and produce standardized/customized outputs such as reports. Solution should have the ability to suppress or lock specific fields of data per UO policy and Oregon law. This includes describing the solution’s ability to import/export, display, and draw reports from a variety of data types (qualitative and quantitative) as well as on a variety of data fields/categories. Some are listed below for reference:
   i) Teaching
   ii) Research and creative output
   iii) Grants
   iv) Patents and entrepreneurial work
   v) Honors and awards
   vi) Memberships (professional organizations)
   vii) Editorial work
   viii) Service
   ix) Equity and Inclusion
   x) Endowments
   xi) Joint appointments
7. g)  Describe how the solution supports peer review materials, currently maintained data systems such as federal grant award information, student evaluation survey data, etc.
8. h)  Describe the solution’s ability to track and show (meta)data details such as date of entry and modification. This might include reappointment, joint appointment, and administrative appointment information.
9. i)  Describe the solution’s ability for data to be searchable, filterable, and queried as needed around a variety of categories including faculty types, promotion/tenure dates, awards and honors, rank/administrative role, joint appointments, grant dollars, etc.
10. j)  Describe the solution’s ability to handle and differentiate between no or missing data, null or zeroed out data, etc. This might also include capturing course release data, promotion-and-tenure clock extensions, etc. that would not present normally within a system.
11. k)  Describe the solution’s ability to export or integrate its data, including any APIs or ODBC access, and any limitations to data via export/API/ODBC.