Each semester, faculty members have many responsibilities, including service to their institution. Managing service data is essential for colleges and universities to conduct comprehensive faculty reviews, publish accurate faculty accomplishments, and build trust with students and sponsors. However, institutions need to use high-quality data management systems to ensure that important information, like service data, stays up to date.
Service for higher education institutions is the act of faculty providing their time or resources to the university, student body, local community, or an external organization. When faculty are participating in academic service, they are going beyond their teaching and scholarship requirements. Through service, educators can help improve the institution and offer their expertise to other communities that can benefit from it.
Service can take on many different forms, including:
Regardless of how you choose to integrate service into your current academic schedule, your participation will strengthen your institution’s initiatives and presence.
Faculty service provides the chance to spread their expertise and contribute their unique skills and knowledge outside of their traditional academic responsibilities. However, faculty service also can significantly benefit your institution by supporting the mission of the university.
Each academic institution has its values, goals and targeted outcomes, which it can use to determine where they need to make changes and carry out initiatives. Through service work, faculty can support their university’s overall growth and development while also backing policies that they are passionate about or areas in which they have experience and subject matter expertise. Faculty can use service opportunities to help their program, department or school, and university at large grow, evolve and improve.
Service can also help universities stand out and add value to their school. Prospective students, families, and other important figures, like donors, employers and sponsors, like to know what sets the university apart and see how they serve the student body and communities beyond the university. Displaying your faculty’s service accomplishments can illustrate how your university encourages and delivers impact beyond the certificates and degrees it provides.
It can be challenging for faculty and staff to find the time for service work and to decide which initiatives to pursue. Try these tips to help you embrace the service mindset:
As a faculty member, you already have a lot to manage each semester. While service is essential to your institution, be sure to establish limits for yourself to help prevent burnout. You want to give your best to your service projects, so choosing less can help you give more to those programs you select.
Though there is a certain humility that accompanies service work, it’s also important to articulate and celebrate your contributions. Being open about your commitments and discussing their impact on your workload with your supervisor can encourage better balance and mutually-aligned goal setting. This can also foster a more holistic understanding of the various ways you are contributing and adding value.
You can add your service to your faculty profile efficiently with Watermark’s Faculty Success solution. While other data management techniques may require hours of manual documentation and distributing paper files or PDFs to share achievements, our faculty activity reporting software allows faculty to automatically update and showcase their accomplishments by simply uploading their most recent CV or adding an activity on the fly.
Using an intuitive and automatic system has many benefits including:
Faculty work hard to help improve their university and impact their students and communities through teaching, research, and service. Higher education institutions can use that information to build trust between students, families, and faculty themselves, as well as give accurate data to important sponsors and donors who can further help the university grow.
Request a demo today of our Faculty Success solution and begin your journey toward better data management and celebration of your faculty’s impact.
