Competition for enrollment between higher education institutions is fierce. Institutions must maximize every advantage they have to attract students, including their faculty’s expertise and qualifications. The prospect of studying under top lecturers could be decisive for potential students — provided they recognize your faculty’s credentials. In this digital age, the online profiles your faculty members display can be invaluable assets for your institution. If you want to set your institution apart by showcasing faculty credentials, this guide will explain the strategies you need to do so.
Having qualified faculty means your lecturers have the education, experience, and expertise to facilitate student success in their field. In the past, being qualified meant having a PhD or master’s degree in the relevant field. Today, while degrees still matter, institutions are taking a broader view of faculty credentials, including academic and industry experience, research contributions, and additional training.
Accreditors like the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) expect institutions to have robust processes for evaluating faculty qualifications that consider all these factors. To achieve accreditation, institutions must have codified faculty credentialing policies, including required documentation to demonstrate academic qualifications, experience, and ongoing professional development.
Higher education institutions are eager to hire faculty with top credentials. However, many underappreciate the importance of showcasing their faculty’s credentials to other parties, including students, accreditors, and the media. Creating compelling online profiles to display faculty qualifications offers several benefits for institutions.
Showcasing faculty credentials can benefit faculty members themselves by accelerating their career success. A compelling profile is an asset to a faculty member when it comes time to advocate for themselves to earn positive annual reviews, conference opportunities, research funding, promotions, or tenure. If their department has objective career progress pathways for faculty, showcasing credentials in a central hub and comparing them to these pathways simplifies faculty reviews.
Faculty profiles can shape the public perception of your institution and enhance your public relations and marketing efforts. Once created and published, these profiles can attract media inquiries and presentation opportunities. They can also appear as results when people search for information related to a faculty member’s work.
Your prospective students are more online than ever. People aged 16-24 spend more time online than any other age group, with over seven hours of average daily internet usage. This means an online presence is more likely than ever to influence whether students choose your institution or another. Optimizing your online faculty profiles can help establish your institution’s faculty members as the experts students want to learn from.
If your institution wants to unlock the benefits of showcasing faculty credentials, following these best practices will help you do so effectively.
Ensure each faculty member has their own web profile. While their online presence can reach far beyond this, their web profile is the updated, authoritative hub for their credentials. As faculty members engage on other platforms, their institutional web profile remains the compelling digital resume that opens doors and that their other channels point back to. A faculty web profile should include:
Research and publications are where faculty expertise shines. Putting the spotlight on faculty members who produce regular research contributions or even popular-level work in their field will enhance their reputations and that of your institution. Ensure each faculty member’s web profile and other online channels draw attention to their recent contributions.
Your institution’s website and social media channels are the public’s windows into the value you have to offer. These online platforms provide opportunities for your faculty to make a positive impression. Ensure these channels are easy to navigate and show faculty members in the best possible light. Along with text-based resumes, you can tell a multidimensional story about your faculty’s excellence through images, videos, and testimonials. Your faculty are your institution’s human faces, so take advantage of the chance to establish an emotional connection with prospective students in your approach to showcasing them.
Social media pages, blog sections on institutional websites, podcasts, and contributions to online publications are spaces where faculty can position themselves as thought leaders. When faculty members produce content that displays their expertise while being accessible to the public, they generate interest in their research and lectures.
These platforms also allow faculty to apply insights from their field of expertise to newsworthy events, which can attract media attention. For example, professors of history or politics could discuss geopolitical events in context, or an environmental science lecturer could explain the potential impact of shifting climate policies.
If faculty members have received awards or other tangible signs of recognition, showcase these as the marks of excellence they are. From academic peer awards to prestigious grants, these accolades should be listed on the faculty member’s web profile and social media pages. Institution-wide social media pages and blogs can also celebrate noteworthy accomplishments by faculty.
Successful alumni are the finest examples of what prospective students could achieve by studying at your institution. Highlight alumni success stories that credit your faculty for their teaching and support. Graduates can share how your faculty members have served as mentors, helping them overcome challenges and maximize their potential. Besides testimonials, you can share rankings, graduation rates, student satisfaction scores, and other KPIs that underline faculty contributions to student success.
Institutions aiming to showcase faculty credentials can save time and resources by adopting a reliable faculty activity data solution. For over 400 institutions and hundreds of thousands of faculty users, Watermark Faculty Success is that dependable solution. Faculty Success allows institutions to share faculty credentials to public web profiles, resumes, accreditation reports, and other platforms.
Features include proactive publication searches and intuitive report builders to streamline the process of showcasing faculty credentials. Faculty Success automates web profile updates so faculty members can benefit from a growing, up-to-date online presence without additional time investments. Meanwhile, customizable career progress timelines simplify faculty review and support career advancement.
Request a free demo to see how Faculty Success can help your institution showcase faculty credentials.
