How do I update my profile in UMBC’s new faculty expert search tool?

The search tool draws from data in Faculty Success (previously called Digital Measures), which is used for Faculty Annual Review. The UMBC website now features a page for users to find UMBC faculty experts (in the pilot phase). This tool will help UMBC faculty find potential collaborators across fields. It will also help prospective grad students, journalists, community partners, and UMBC staff identify faculty with expertise in particular subject areas.

The search tool draws from data in Faculty Success, which is used for Faculty Annual Review. UMBC already provides general instructions on how to update your info in Faculty Success. This new guide will help you do so in a way that ensures your resulting faculty expert profile is engaging, accurate, current, and accessible.

Key steps

1. Log In

To open Faculty Success, sign into my.umbc.edu and click on Guide in the top navigation. Under Personal Links click on Faculty Success.

2. Add your bio, teaching interests, research interest

Under General Information, go to Personal and Contact Information. This area is the data source for our search tool. Complete the sections Brief Biography, Teaching Interests, and Research Interests. If you want to appear in a search for a particular term, that term should appear in your Brief Biography, Teaching Interests, or Research Interests.

- Use language that (1) is accessible to readers of all backgrounds, including those outside your field; (2) is brief and simple; and (3) includes any keywords that someone might use to find your work. For support with identifying the best terms to use, contact the subject librarian for your discipline at library.umbc.edu/makearesearchappt.
- Your Brief Biography should be 100 words or fewer, written as 1-2 simple sentences. You can include up to 800 characters in the Brief Biography text box.
- We recommend keeping the Teaching Interests and Research Interests sections under 200 words each. You can use paragraphs with complete sentences, a bulleted list, or a combination.

3. Help people find you

If you want people to be able to find you based on your existing collaborations or collaboration interests, community-engaged work, or international work, include essential summaries, words, and phrases related to this work in the General Information section of Personal and Contact Information.

- Include brief info about fluency in different languages, international awards, international research collaborations, teaching abroad, international fieldwork, degrees from institutions outside the U.S., dual appointments at other universities, and conferences or exhibitions abroad.
- Include your core local partners, such as community organizations, schools, and government agencies; major collaborative projects to which you’ve contributed; and key grants, awards, publications, or events related to community-engaged work.

4. Complete remaining fields as usual

Add the details you typically would for the Faculty Annual Review process. To speed up the process by importing information about your scholarly work from other systems and tools, see this guide.

You can choose to display in your faculty profile information from these sections: Classes Taught; Artistic and Professional Performances and Exhibits; Creative Publications; Contracts, Fellowships, Grants and Sponsored Research; Intellectual Contributions; Intellectual Property; Research in Progress; and Presentations. To display information from these sections in your public profile, select your preference under “show in profile.”

Please note that the search tool will not search from the material you add to these sections; it will simply display the material you choose to show from these sections. This information may also be displayed in your faculty profile on other sites.umbc.edu directory listings, such as your department’s faculty listing (depending on settings).

5. Turn on your new profile and update essential directory info

To make the info you just added visible in the new faculty expert search tool, visit umbc.edu/go/directory-info, and under Profile Format select Faculty Success. Only directory information, Personal and Contact Information, and other Faculty Success items you have specifically selected will display in your public profile.

Through the directory info page, you can also update your basic directory information. If you have appointments in multiple departments, indicate those departments on this page so that information displays in your profile.

Please also upload your profile photo through the directory info page. Adding a photo will make your profile feel more personal and be more visible to people who want to connect with you.

Finishing touches

See how your faculty expertise profile appears to the public by searching for yourself at umbc.edu/faculty/search. Next, make sure that your profile appears in the searches you want it to by searching key terms that you hope will yield your profile as a result.

If there is anything you want to change, add, or remove, do so through Faculty Success and the changes will be reflected within ten minutes in your database profile. You can continue to make changes at any time, even after the Faculty Annual Review deadline has passed, to keep your profile current.

Need help?

A team at UMBC’s Albin O. Kuhn Library is ready to assist you. Find your subject librarian (library.umbc.edu/makearesearchappt) for help with identifying keywords and search terms for your research and teaching interests. For Faculty Success questions, contact Nora Bye, coordinator, institutional research, at norabye@umbc.edu. Other questions about this project? Email Dinah Winnick, director of communications and content strategy, at dwinnick@umbc.edu.