Frequently Asked Questions about Faculty Success

What is Faculty Success (formerly known as Digital Measures)?

• Faculty Success is a database for faculty and IAS to record their teaching, scholarship, service, and other activities. The reporting functions are used for annual reports, retention, promotion, post-tenure review, and IAS renewal. In addition, departments are encouraged to use it for merit. 

How do you use the system? Upload files? Run reports?

• Full documentation on individual and departmental use of Faculty Success.

Who uses Faculty Success?

• All UWL faculty are expected to report their annual activities via Faculty Success. IAS are encouraged to use the system annually and may be required to do so depending on departmental processes. IAS must use Faculty Success for promotion processes.

How far back are activities entered?

• All probationary (non-tenured ranked faculty) have to enter their activities from their date of hire at UWL.
• All tenured associate professors who are planning on being promoted to full have to enter at least three years of activities and are requested to enter more.
• All tenured full professors have to enter their annual activities each year.

What are the deadlines?

• All faculty and IAS must enter their data from the previous academic year by JUNE 1.
• Department chairs must complete departmental data and annual reports by JULY 1.
• Deadlines for departmental review are set by the departments.

How do you get into the system?

• From any computer with an internet connection you can get to the portal from the quick links at the top of the main  UWL home page and enter your NetID and password.
• New faculty & IAS will be automatically added to the system.
• If the system reports that you are not in the database, contact the System Administrator (Brenda Murray in Institutional Research, Assessment, and Planning - bmurray@uwlax.edu)

What do I have to enter? And under what category?

• The system is designed around the classic big three categories – teaching, scholarship, and service. In addition, there are fields for retention- and/or promotion-related materials.
• Having the dates of your activities is very important.
• There are no fields that are required to be completed.
• Consult with your department chair and colleagues regarding what to include and where to enter certain activities – it is often a judgment call.

Is there a size limit to the uploads?

• Yes – each hyperlink can only be a maximum of 10MB. 1024 Kilobytes = 1MB.
• Examples? 20-30 page documents in *.docx or *.pdf format tend to be in the ~100KB range or ~1MB.
• Files with images and music or video files are much larger and faculty will need to choose a short clip to upload.

When is the teaching schedule information loaded?

• Fall and summer courses are loaded in mid October.
• Spring and winter courses are loaded in mid March.

What report format is needed for the various personnel reviews?

• Merit – report format determined by your department.
• Retention – two reports are required by the dean:
  • annual report from the past year.
  • personnel report from date of hire.
• Promotion – present – from date of hire or last promotion at UWL.
• Post Tenure Review - annual report reflecting the last 5 years.

What about security?

• The materials hyperlinked to the reports are public domain materials once the report has been generated and forwarded to others. However, for retention and promotion past the departmental level, secure sites (such as a learning management system) are utilized.

What if UWL changes vendors?

• The data in Faculty Success can be downloaded in an excel spreadsheet form.

Who can see/change what?

• Department chairs can see/alter information in the fields for their own faculty (an electronic record is kept for any alteration).
• Deans can see/alter all of the faculty and department level information in their colleges.
• The Provost can see all college/departmental/individual information.

Someone else entered a co-authored publication, and it has errors. What do I do?

• Speak to the person who entered the information and request the change (their name is indicated in Faculty Success).

Who do I contact with questions?

• Most questions about what to include and where should be directed to your Dean’s Office or department chair.
• Technical questions regarding problems with the system should be directed to the System Administrator (Brenda Murray in Institutional Research, Assessment, and Planning - bmurray@uwlax.edu).

How do you successfully replace a file in digital measures?

• Rename the file – it appears to resolve the problem.

What if the hyperlinks in my reports are not working?

• If you are not getting an error message, make sure that the new file just hasn’t opened up somewhere unexpected.
• Click “ok” to internet browser security warnings.
• If you are getting an error message, make sure you uploaded a file with an extension – such as .doc, .pdf… etc. and that there are no “odd” symbols in the name (such as # or $).