Purpose

1. Engage with the Interfolio project and Faculty Information System (FIS) support teams, to provide local unit feedback and streamline ongoing communications about Ohio State’s Interfolio adoption and use. 
2. Enhance people’s understanding of, investment in, and engagement with Interfolio. 
3. Be a standing support structure for Interfolio use at the university.

Goals

Build an Interfolio community practice and ensure Ohio State is maximizing value from Interfolio use, by: 

• Discussing feedback from university community to enhance usability and output 
• Reviewing product utilization and setting goals 
• Reviewing and approving system maintenance decisions 
• Ensuring ongoing training needs are met 
• Offering a forum for super-users to share their feedback 
• Recognizing opportunities for and achievement of high-level adoption wins  
• Assessing new potential data sources and feeds 
• Voting on proposed changes to system and support workflows 
• Identifying and disseminating best practice recommendations 
• Evaluating proposed new and unusual use cases for potential application 
• Examining feature requests and proposed functions (additions, changes) 
• Providing feedback to Interfolio vendor

Member responsibilities

• Attend monthly meetings 
  • Attend meetings with no more than two consecutive absences, and no more than three non-consecutive absences, in an academic year (August through May) 
  • In the event of either more than two consecutive or more than three non-consecutive absences, the vice provost for academic policy and faculty resources will contact the unit’s associate dean for faculty affairs or designated representative to request a new representative 
  • Members are expected to attend each meeting in full, either in person or remotely, and are asked not to schedule attendance at other meetings, appointments, events, or activities that overlap or conflict with the ISG meeting calendar 
• Provide bidirectional communication, by: 
  • Describing to ISG the needs, goals, and interests of the academic area(s) the member is appointed to represent 
  • Disseminating to the represented unit(s) information about ISG efforts and decisions, system updates, support and training resources, and recommended best practices 
• Promote an Interfolio community of practice, by: 
  • Identifying, refining, and advocating for recommended best practices 
  • Sharing strategies for streamlining system use and related workflows 
• Vote on proposed changes to system and support workflows

Member representation

• Staff
  • Staff (e.g., faculty affairs, executive and administrative assistants) with robust experience coordinating, managing, and/or supporting promotion and tenure processes
• Faculty
  • Assistant professors on the tenure track, with one or two years remaining before their tenure review 
  • Tenured associate professors, and professors and non-probationary clinical/teaching/practice faculty, with significant experience managing information in previous faculty information systems (e.g., OSUpro, Research in View, Vita)
• General
  • Staff and faculty with the above backgrounds, who also coach faculty while involved in a P&T process, are particularly sought for membership

Meetings

Most meetings will be remote but on rare instances, members’ in-person attendance may be requested or expected. Beginning April 23, monthly meetings will occur on the fourth Tuesday of each month from 9-11 a.m. throughout 2024 with two exceptions: June 18 and December 17. Meeting cadence will then shift to the fourth Wednesday of each month from 10 a.m. to noon beginning in January 2025.

Time Frame

Meetings scheduled monthly for three calendar years. Initial membership to be reviewed and reevaluated after 18 months. 

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Introduction 

Interfolio is Ohio State’s new Faculty Information System (FIS). The Interfolio system is supported by the FIS team in Ohio State’s Office of Technology and Digital Innovation (OTDI). Dr. Helen Malone, Vice Provost for Academic Policy and Faculty Resources, leads the Interfolio adoption effort. The FIS team is tasked with providing Interfolio support to all full-time university faculty, plus staff in faculty affairs roles and others who help coordinate academic units’ appointment, review, promotion and tenure (APT) processes. 

High level expectations and requirements about Ohio State APT processes are codified in Ohio State Bylaws and Rules, and in the Office of Academic Affairs (OAA) Policies and Procedures Handbook. Pattern of Administration (POA) and Appointments, Promotion, and Tenure (APT) governance documents describe administrative processes specific to each college and regional campus, along with University Libraries. 

Ohio State’s POA and APT documents reflect many differences in how academic units manage their “local” processes to achieve outcomes that align with university-wide standards and requirements. Due to this variation and complexity, and the overall sensitivity and utmost importance of university review, promotion, and tenure, the FIS Distributed Support Model (DSM) gives people responsible for APT oversight, i.e., the associate and assistant deans for faculty affairs and their designees, the ability to align their digital workflows with processes and practices specific to their respective academic units. 

Purpose and Goals

The FIS DSM seeks to optimize the faculty experience and maximize each academic unit’s success using Interfolio by providing training and support resources, and giving academic units’ faculty affairs teams the ability to administer Interfolio access with flexible local workflows. This document outlines options for operationalizing FIS distributed support. The options are a mix of technical and procedural approaches that address needs for managing complicated, high-stakes processes, and delivering high-level support and training to clarify requirements, highlight best practices, advocate for streamlined communications, and either respond to urgent system concerns or escalate these to the Interfolio vendor support team, as needed. 

Through the FIS Distributed Support approach, the FIS team will deliver the following resources: 

• training sessions (scheduled, ad hoc, and office hours, and “train the trainer” opportunities)
• online resources to support Interfolio use at Ohio State
• templates that clarify OAA requirements for using Interfolio to manage APT processes and document faculty activities, which individual academic units can append to describe local practices and expectations
• ongoing engagement with the Interfolio Steering Group, which will meet monthly to discuss each unit’s needs and interests, and provide feedback to the Interfolio adoption project team and FIS team 

Associate and assistant deans of faculty affairs and their designees will participate in the FIS Distributed Support approach by: 

• identifying one or more people in each academic area who have APT expertise and experience handling that area’s APT processes, who will be first points of contact in two key contexts:  
  • to faculty and other staff in that academic area, to give guidance with Interfolio as well as APT processes, and to escalate questions as needed, either to the associate and assistant deans of faculty affairs or their designees, or to the FIS team, depending on context
  • to the FIS team for sensitive and urgent concerns, and for co-managing staff Interfolio accounts, e.g., submitting requests for/administering staff members’ Interfolio access/removal and role assignments
• nominating people from their unit for faculty and staff membership on the Interfolio Steering Group

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