Clicking on image will show enlarged example of faculty bio with feeds and social bookmarks
You may have become familiar with “Meet the Faculty“, a website listing of UMW faculty alphabetically and by department. Then there is the “Media Resource Guide” (now known as “Faculty Experts”), which is less well-known, but organizes faculty bios by areas of expertise. Faculty can be displayed within the Faculty Experts guide only if they have an area of expertise that has been highlighted as part of their bio. Listings here are searchable by discipline, so members of the media can search by the area they are looking for.
I think we can agree that these listings have left a lot to be desired in terms of really conveying the personality of our faculty. Heretofore, they have been managed entirely centrally and faculty have not had the opportunity to post information on their bio pages. That all changes now.
The new “Meet the Faculty” and “Faculty Experts” allows for the following to be published by faculty members:
- Faculty-Submitted Bio: Faculty may submit their bio to the system for review and publication. This may now be done through the WordPress interface itself at any time during the year. We encourage faculty not to wait to be solicited for a bio. Bios submitted will be immediately published to the web. They will be reviewed for spelling and grammar by the University Relations office who will make corrections, if necessary, in consultation with the faculty member.
- Social Bookmarks: Building on core WordPress functionality, the faculty member may include their social bookmarks, and feeds, for Twitter, Facebook, Google +, LinkedIn, etc.
- Banner Data Integration: Faculty member’s current semester courses, department, and contact data will display automatically on their page. This is based on real-time Banner data.
- Faculty Member’s blogs, videos, photos: Feeds from YouTube, Flickr, and the faculty member’s blog can also be displayed on this page.
The intention is to create essentially an online professional presence for each of our faculty members. We wanted to give control to the faculty to present themselves as they would like to be presented, and to share as much of their online presence as they can in a single location.
Our faculty are central to the life and image of our institution. If you are a faculty member, I hope that you will follow this tutorial to assist you in completing your online bio for the new academic year. It will take you 10 minutes at most.
As always, if you have any questions, contact the web office.
