Academic and Administrative Computing Councils Review Two Major IT Projects

This Fall, the Academic and Administrative Computing Coordinating Councils (AC4 and AdC3, respectively) have been discussing two of the projects featured in the UC Davis List of IT Projects for 2003-05.

In October, Council members discussed the Faculty and Merit Promotion project headed by the Office of Academic Personnel, with support from Information and Educational Technology (IET). Three main options are under consideration to improve the current, paper-based faculty merit and promotion system: a) InfoVault, the system the School of Medicine is using; b) a document management system capable of supporting workflow functionality; and c) a customized, in-house solution. The primary goal for developing a campuswide system is to reduce workload at the academic department level. An oversight committee has been appointed to coordinate the information gathering process and to analyze the extent to which the various approaches under consideration will provide the functionality desired in a Web-based Faculty Merit and Promotion system. The oversight committee will consult widely, including with the joint Councils, Technology Infrastructure Forum, Senior Advisors, Council of Deans and Vice Chancellors, and faculty focus groups. The oversight committee is co-chaired by Connie Melendy, Assistant Vice Provost for Academic Personnel, and Dave Shelby, Assistant Vice Provost-IET. For more information about the Faculty Merit Promotion Project, see the October 2003 report to the Academic and Administrative Computing Councils.

In December, Council members discussed the proposal for an Electronic Research Administration (ERA) system for the campus. Currently, academic research and grant proposal development, review, approval, submission, and administration is a complex series of processes. This process is a time-consuming task for faculty who also rely on departmental staff and the UCD Office of Research. Furthermore, once the proposal is funded, there are continuing tasks including tracking of budget expenditures, filing of reports, responding to requests for information from various groups (the funding agency, UCOP, other units at UCD, etc.). One of the goals for a campuswide ERA system would be to enable the creation of an electronic warehouse to support the development, submission, and administration of proposals by faculty and the administration of funded research grants by faculty, staff and administrators. Such a system would have requirements for security, flexible inputs and outputs, and interfaces to other campus information and financial resources. For more information about the Faculty Merit Promotion Project, see the October 2003 report to the Academic and Administrative Computing Councils.