Faculty Success FAQs

Immense effort is devoted to producing current information for various purposes, including tenure processes, accreditation self-studies, and more. Often the same information is requested multiple times from multiple sources. Consequently, the Divisions of Academic and Student Affairs have acquired a software tool to enable gathering and reporting most of this information from one source. Purposes include more efficient processes and production of more accurate and complete information. The Faculty Success website lists these features: speed, accuracy, security, and completely configurable.

Over time, the system will be used to produce tenure, merit, and promotion documents; qualifications information for accreditation reporting; scholarship and publications reports; biographical information for presentations or grant proposals; and resumes’ useful for many different purposes. Many different custom reports can be produced, once the data is entered.

Prior to accessing Faculty Success for the first time, your name must be entered into the system. Once your name is entered, you will receive an e-mail confirmation. Each college-level administrator will provide the Office of Academic Affairs with the list of the individuals who should be provided with accounts.  You can find liaisons here.

Once your account has been established, log into Ferris360 and search for "Faculty Success," then click on the search result of the same name.  

Information included will be that provided by the individual faculty and staff members. Most of the information is what would be found on a current resume, including degrees earned (including major, date, institution); employment history; special certifications or qualifications; recognitions; employment category or rank (such as Professor), etc. Beginning Fall 2017, basic qualifications information must be entered for all Ferris faculty and key personnel. See separate documents for the appearance of the websites that will be populated with qualification information to meet the transparency requirements of the Higher Learning Commission.

College tenure, promotion, merit, and post-tenure processes will dictate how materials are provided. Over time, we expect that all colleges will take advantage of the benefits of having a database available that contains the required information and facilitates a process improvement.

In part, the membership (fees paid) is based upon the number of users projected overall and for each college. Our goal is that all faculty and administrative personnel will have access to update their records and generate their own documents. We will need to review this plan as we approach the next contract period.

All of the data is owned by the University, even though the servers storing the data are housed elsewhere. Our service agreement specifies that the data cannot be used for any other purposes and the company is committed legally to protecting the confidentiality of the data. Refer to the Faculty Success Privacy Statement by clicking on the Privacy Statement in the gray box on your log-in landing page – the Manage Your Activities screen. This page lays out all of the security measures taken to protect our data.

Clerical support is available for entering much of the base information from existing documents, such as resumes. Often this data entry can be performed by student workers or clerical personnel. However, if this capacity does not exist within the College, the Office of Academic Affairs will provide assistance with this data entry through the utilization of student or adult part-time personnel.

Only designated college administrators may access your information. Typically, this will be one or two individuals at the college level. You also always have access to viewing your information and updating or deleting any information and producing any reports you desire. The system is set up in a hierarchy according to the organizational structure. Thus, at the University level, two individuals in Academic Affairs have access to produce reports at the university level. Each college has designated one or two individuals (typically the Dean and the Dean’s Administrative Assistant) who can access only college-level information. Department Heads/Chairs will also have access to just the reports for their assigned areas. Ferris controls the access to all of the data, and each college makes determinations about which individuals should have access. 

Activity Insight is Section 508-compliant.

Many colleges and universities utilize Faculty Success. Mechanisms exist for transporting your files if you move to an institution with Faculty Success. Absent this, you will be able to export all of your reports in Word Format so that you could copy/paste this information into future products you may want to use.

Each college will have an administrator responsible for providing assistance within the College.  That list is available on this website at the Contacts link.   

While the duties in each college will vary, in general we expect college-level representatives to perform the following functions:

1. Keep the user lists updated by requesting new accounts and deactivating those no longer at Ferris. Notation should be made to add an account for each new hire. A policy will be developed for how long to keep profiles for individuals no longer employed at Ferris. Consult with Academic Affairs before deleting any accounts.
2. Work with Academic Affairs and college leadership to provide assistance in getting information entered from existing documents, such as current resumes and/or conference attendance reports.
3. Provide faculty and staff with assistance with basic system operations or make appropriate referrals.
4. Facilitate or collaborate with college-level planning for the use of the system in college-level processes, such as tenure and promotion.
5. Share perspectives with the college’s representatives to the the Office of Academic Affairs to facilitate ongoing improvement efforts.