Online promotion and tenure team receives innovation award

May 23, 2014

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The Online Promotion and Tenure Team at University of Florida has received the 2014 HR Innovation Award from the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources, known as CUPA-HR .

The team received the award for creating a first-of-its-kind online promotion and tenure process. Thanks to the support of PeopleAdmin, CUPA-HR is offering a $3,000 contribution to UF’s endowment or a scholarship fund of the team’s choice.

The HR Innovation Award honors a team’s or an individual’s demonstrated human resources innovation. The innovation can be technological in nature, based in process improvement, a novel partnership that advances the profession, or a new approach to an HR department’s current challenge; but most important, it must advance the HR profession or contribute to the overall excellence of the profession.
Historically, promotion and tenure has been a laborious task for both faculty members and administrators. There has been little technical advancement in this area over the years and voluminous paper packets are the norm. Unable to find any existing technical solutions for promotion and tenure, the University of Florida decided to develop its own system.

Outcomes of the Online Promotion and Tenure process include reduced use of paper, reduced work time for faculty and staff, increased accessibility of materials for academic review board committee members, improved transparency at all review levels and the ability for faculty members to monitor their progress throughout the cycle. A large proportion of each faculty member’s evaluation data is auto populated in the system, including education, teaching evaluations, graduate student information, publications and patent and copyright agreements.

“We are the first university in the nation to implement a fully automated online promotion and tenure process,” said Janet Malphurs, assistant director of HR/academic personnel at UF. “This new electronic workflow saves thousands of dollars annually in paper and printing costs, creates sustainability, reduces waste and saves valuable time.”