[Plsfaculty] UAvitae information, instructions, and requests.

[Fane, Bentley A - (bfane)]

Greetings:

Annual faculty reports are due on January 30th for 2016.  Unlike previous years, no major updates and/or modifications to the UAvitae system (http://uavitae.arizona.edu/) are planned between now and January 30th. Thus, data can be entered at anytime. Instructions for UAvitae were sent in an earlier email from Karen. January 30th is a strict deadline. Please do not wait until the last minute; there may not be someone to help you as the deadline approaches.

Those of you who have served on the committee know evaluation becomes difficult when documents are unclear or contain redundancies. Therefore, the committee would greatly appreciate your cooperation when you prepare your dossier. Below are some requests that would aid the committee’s work and help you navigate through the glorious UAvitae system; which, as of 12/29/16, is delightfully resplendent with odious and tedious quirks.

Topics covered in this email
1. Browser for Mac users
2. UAvitae section Teaching: Credit Bearing Courses
A. Finding courses taught Spring 2016:
B.  TCE reports
3. Teaching: Student Mentoring, Advising and Activities
A. Redundant entries
B. Post-doctoral fellows
C. Research staff
4. Research: Grants and Contracts
A. Redundant entries
B. Grants with multiple PI’s

5. Research: Scholarly Contributions and Creative Productions
A. Redundant entries
B. Journal publications versus review articles.

6. Other UAvitae sections – Please remove redundant entries.

1. Browser for Mac users

When navigating through this system, the Firefox browser worked much better than the Safari browser, which often froze and gave erroneous error messages. Before becoming too frustrated, you may wish to update or try a different browser.

2. UAvitae section Teaching: Credit Bearing Courses

A. Finding courses taught Spring 2016: Currently the default display on UAvitae is Fall-Winter 2016. Thus, if you taught a course in the spring, you will not see it until you change the time range. Under “view teaching,” set the start semester to “Spring 2016” and spring courses will appear.  This applies to most other sections as well.

B. TCE reports: Although TCE reports have been uploaded to the system, the data is incomplete. Mean values and standard deviations have not been calculated. However, the TCE reports obtained on UAccess (see dashboard under the Analytics section) have these values. Please take the time to upload these more thorough reports in the “Course Attachment” section. You can either replace the current “Course Evaluation” or upload the more thorough report in the  “Other” section as an “Alternate Course Evaluation.”

TCE scores from extremely large courses are generally lower than smaller courses. If you teach one of these courses, or any size course, you may wish to upload a “Comparison Report,” which can also be obtained from UAccess  (see dashboard under the Analytics section).  This comparison may demonstrate that your teaching is more effective than the raw TCE scores indicate.

3. Teaching: Student Mentoring, Advising and Activities

A. Redundant entries: This section can be rich in redundancies, especially when listing graduate students. Since GradPath information is automatically entered every time a student files a form with the graduate school, the same graduate student is often listed several times. Please remove the redundancies. It takes a long time for your colleagues to wade through them.

B. Post-doctoral fellows:  there is no section in UAvitae specifically for post-doctoral mentoring. List post-doctoral fellows in the “Student Mentoring, Advising and Activities” section and write post-doctoral fellow as the “Activity Description.”

C. Technician and other research staff training: there is no section in UAvitae specifically for research staff training. Do not list staff in the “Teaching: Student Mentoring, Advising and Activities” section . Instead, list research technicians and other staff in the section entitled “Additional Input,” which is located near the end of the menu.  Under “Heading or Brief Title” enter “Research Staff Training.”  For description, enter “Research technician” and the name of individual. Activity type should be “Teaching.”

4. Research: Grants and Contracts

A. Redundancies: Because entries in this section may have been added manually or by the UAVitae system, this section often contains redundancies. Please remove redundant entries that have not been administratively locked by the system.

B. Grants with multiple PIs: The committee needs to know the how grant funds are partitioned between multiple PIs. UAvitae does not perform this function and entries cannot be edited due to administrative locks. The partitioning of funds often does not reflect percent effort. Please provide this information in the section entitled “Additional Input,” which is located near the end of the menu.  Under “Heading or Brief Title” enter “Fund Partitioning for Grants with multiple PIs”. For description, enter each grant and the direct funds that go directly to your laboratory.  It is much easier for the committee if you provide this information as opposed to seeking it from the business office when questions arise.

5. Research: Scholarly Contributions and Creative Productions

A. Redundant entries: Because entries in this section may have been added manually or by using an import function that connects to MedLine or Web of Science, this section often contains redundancies. Please remove redundant entries and update the status on individual publications.   If you use the import functions, you will still need to fill out the “Activity Classifications.”

B. Review articles versus Journal Publications: Many review articles are published in journals. If using the import function, a review article will be listed as a journal publication.  However, next to the journal name enter “(Review Article).”

6. Other UAvitae sections – Please remove redundant entries!  Wading through redundant entries is the most difficult and time-consuming endeavor in the review process. Please be kind to your colleagues.

Thanks in advance for your cooperation.




Bentley Fane, Professor
The BIO5 Institute
Keating Building
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ, 85721
bfane at email.arizona.edu<mailto:bfane at email.arizona.edu>

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