What is this project?
The goal of this project is to create standardized faculty directory presentations in departments and colleges across campus, using the data contained within the Watermark Faculty Success system. This project is a result of work done by University Communications and the Office of Planning and Analysis, with support from the Offices of the Provost and the Vice President for Research and Economic Development.
Why?
The overall quality of past departmental directories and faculty profile pages has varied widely, generally correlating with the availability of web-focused resources within each department. Faculty activity information (for example, publications or grants) was often out of date or incorrect. In addition, the location of these directories was not consistent between departments, making for inconsistent navigation experiences by our visitors.
The new Watermark Faculty Success powered faculty profile pages and directories are designed to:
- Provide a shared and consistent base-level experience across MSU departments to make locating faculty simpler and more intuitive.
- Eliminate the duplication of efforts that comes with a faculty member maintaining both Watermark data and identical data in their existing directory and profile page.
- Ensure that profiles are accurate and current by leveraging existing Watermark data and workflow - faculty do not need to be trained in our Content Management System to update their profiles.
- Use the structured data present in Watermark to power our people search (activated when using the MSU Google Search)
- Further incentivize the use of Watermark Faculty Success itself
What does the end result look like?
By January 7, 2019, every academic department will have the faculty portion of their directory powered by Watermark Faculty Success:
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Chemistry and Biochemistry Watermark Faculty Success directory | Chemistry and Biochemistry faculty profile page (linked to from the directory) |
Departmental employees who are not in Watermark Faculty Success still have traditionally edited directory pages (edited within MSU's Content Management System). This group typically includes staff, professionals, students, and emeritus and affiliate faculty.
How does the system work?
As a faculty member updates their Watermark information, selected activity categories are then displayed on their faculty web profile page. Individual faculty can choose the level of involvement they'd like with the profile data using the Web Profile Screen within Watermark: If they do nothing, then activities like Grants, Creative and Intellectual Contributions, and Service will be chronologically pulled (most recent first by a predefined number of records - 10 publications, 5 grants, etc). Through the Web Profile Screen, faculty can choose exactly which activities show up in as many categories as they'd like. Data updated in Watermark will be reflected in the web profile presentation the next day - our help center as documentation on how to refresh data on demand if desired.
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Watermark General Information showing Web Profile | Web Profile Screen - note customized publication list |
Further Information
More help documentation and information on our Watermark Faculty Success web profile system is available here.
Also available to get you up and running quickly is our Getting Started with your Watermark Faculty Success Web Profile guide.