Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs Dianne Martin led a presentation about the George Washington University’s Lyterati system and announced a new data consolidator and search tool called Expert Finder at the Faculty Senate meeting Friday.
The meeting, led by Provost Steven Lerman, also included an analysis of last week’s Faculty Assembly meeting from Faculty Senate Chair Charles Garris.
The Lyterati system allows faculty members to enter CV information and complete annual reviews online. A recent update has improved transparency, Dr. Martin said. Now, faculty members can monitor the status of their annual reviews as department chairs and deans review them.
Anecdotal information suggests the update has made the process smoother for deans, Dr. Martin said. She added that the system will notify faculty by email next year to complete annual reviews.
One of the benefits of Lyterati is that it holds academic history and information compiled from faculty CVs. This data is useful for the accreditation process and for creating special internal reports. For example, Dr. Martin said, the Faculty Senate Urban Affairs Committee recently used data from Lyterati to find faculty members involved in urban affairs projects.
Information from Lyterati also will be an integral part of GW Expert Finder, a new public-facing data consolidator that Dr. Martin announced Friday. Data from the research platform Orcid and GW’s internal Banner system also will populate Expert Finder.
The goal of the new system is to address both internal and external requests to locate faculty experts and consolidate multiple databases that store faculty information.
“Internally, we can locate each other, and externally, we can push ourselves forward—and it does support our strategic plan to improve the research infrastructure,” Dr. Martin said.
Faculty members will receive more information about the system in the coming weeks. Expert Finder will remain internal until January so that professors have a chance to review and select the data they want to be available to the public.
Following Dr. Martin’s presentation, Dr. Garris gave a recap and analysis of last Tuesday’s Faculty Assembly vote.
A resolution to amend the Faculty Organization Plan to allow non-tenured faculty to serve on the Faculty Senate was received positively by a majority of those voting, but failed to achieve the necessary two-thirds to pass in a 169-159 vote.
Dr. Garris noted that the Faculty Assembly saw many participants from the medical wing of the university who want a voice in governance. Although the resolution did not pass, Dr. Garris said that the Faculty Senate could examine ways to be more inclusive and representative of all faculty. He suggested appointing a task force to reach out to departments to gauge the Senate’s relevancy.
“The exercise could turn out to be a good thing, and it could strengthen the Faculty Senate if we pull everyone together,” Dr. Garris said.