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Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
Faculty Affairs Office
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Feinberg Faculty Portal: Guidance for Administrators

The Feinberg Faculty Portal, powered by Interfolio, is designed to support faculty throughout their careers at Feinberg, providing a central location for managing professional activity and accomplishments to support processes including performance review, promotion and tenure review, and mentoring.

The information on this page is intended for administrators. There is a separate page for faculty, which administrators should review as well.

 
  1. Know what is expected of faculty
    Read the faculty version of the Feinberg Faculty Portal web page to understand what faculty have been asked to do at go-live, and be prepared to assist them and answer questions. In particular, become familiar with the Go-Live Checklist for faculty.
     
  2. Emulate a faculty member
    Emulation is the process by which you access an individual faculty member's account in the career activity module to review, add, or edit data. Once you are emulating a faculty member, you can take actions that they can take:
  3. Anticipate questions
    Become familiar with these sections of the Portal, which are likely to generate questions from users because their use is less straightforward than other sections:
    • Profile > Biographical Narratives
    • Profile > Interests
    • Activities > Publications and Scholarly Works
  4. Manage support accounts
    Department administrators can manage staff access to the career activity module for their unit.
     
  5. Be prepared to use Northwestern Elements
    Super users should be prepared to use Northwestern Elements to make manual updates to publication lists if necessary.

The Career Activity Module is where a faculty member's professional activities and accomplishments are recorded. This module is used to manage content on the public Feinberg Faculty Profiles, generate CVs and biosketches, conduct self-assessment for faculty performance reviews, and perform administrative reporting.

 Faculty Access
Active faculty and future hires obtain access after their NU netID, employee ID, and email address are issued

  • Faculty accounts in the Career Activity Module are updated daily through an automated data feed from the Faculty Affairs Office's faculty database, which remains the source of truth for faculty appointment data.
  • All active faculty will have a Feinberg Faculty Portal account if their Northwestern University netID, employee ID, and email address have been issued. To ensure that a new faculty member has an active Portal account on their start date, administrators should submit complete new hire paperwork at least 3 weeks in advance of the start date. 
  • New faculty hires will have access to their Feinberg Faculty Portal account after their Northwestern University netID, employee ID, and email address have been issued. If these items are issued before a faculty member's start date, his or her profile can be updated in advance of the hire date.  However, the Feinberg Faculty Profile will not appear publicly until the faculty start date, and publications can't be managed in Northwestern Elements until the faculty start date.

 Staff Access
Department administrators manage staff access for their unit

Staff can obtain access to the Feinberg Faculty Portal in order to update profiles and career data on behalf of faculty and to run administrative reports. Department administrators manage staff access for their unit by provisioning support acccounts and specifying the user rights (full admin rights, report rights, or limited rights) for each account.

  • Manage Support Accounts
    Department Administrators have Full Admin Rights, which allows them to grant access to others by provisioning support accounts.

 Switch Permissions
Change the department/division/unit you are viewing (if you have access to more than one)

If you have access to multiple units, but not the parent unit that contains them, you will need to switch between units to access faculty accounts in each. When logged into the Feinberg Faculty Portal, click on your name in the upper right corner of the screen and look for the Switch Permissions sub-heading to see the list of other units you have access to. Click on one to switch to that unit.

Note: If you have been given access to a unit that has the word "Rollup" included in the name, then you have access to all the units below the rollup unit in the organizational structure without needing to switch permissions to see them.

 Emulate a Faculty Member
Emulation is the process by which you can view, add, and edit data on behalf of faculty

 Manage Faculty Publications
Journal articles, books, chapters, and conference proceedings are managed in a separate system called Northwestern Elements

Do not manually enter journal articles, books, chapters, and published conference proceedings!

The Publications and Scholarly Works section contains some data that are delivered by a data feed and some data that are manually entered. Journal articles, books, chapters,and published conference proceedings are imported through a data feed and additions or corrections should be managed in the source system called Northwestern Elements. Each department is responsible for developing Northwestern Elements super users to assist faculty with updates or questions related to publications.

View the Northwestern Elements page for more information and links to resources from the Galter Health Sciences Library, which oversees the system.

 Reporting
Resources and training on reporting will be offered in late 2019

Administrators will be eager to use reporting and we expect to have resources and training available on this topic in late 2019. At go-live, our focus will be on the faculty experience--helping faculty become comfortable with data entry and helping them understand the value they can gain out of using it.

 Interfolio Resources
Feinberg partnered with an external vendor named Interfolio to implement the Feinberg Faculty Portal.

Interfolio's product name for the career activity module is Faculty180:

The Case Review Module is a paperless workflow module through which cases are routed electronically for review. At this time, only promotion and tenure cases are being administered using the Case Review Module. As a result, please visit Promotion & Tenure: A Guide for Administrators for resources and guidance on using this module. Feinberg will expand use of the Case Review Module to more processes over time.

 Faculty and Staff Access
Access to this module is managed by the Faculty Affairs Office

Access to the Career Activity Module and the Case Review Module are managed separately. Department Administrators should contact the Faculty Affairs Office at fao@northwestern.edu to request access to the Case Review Module for their staff.

At this time, only faculty on departmental and school APT committees are interacting with the Case Review Module. To update your departmental APT committee roster, contact the Faculty Affairs Office as well.

 Interfolio Resources
Feinberg partnered with an external vendor named Interfolio to implement the Feinberg Faculty Portal.

Interfolio's product name for the case review module is Review, Promotion, and Tenure (RPT).

About Dossier

  • Dossier is a personal, private document repository. All faculty receive Dossier accounts and administrators will generally receive Dossier accounts by virtue of having access to one of the other Feinberg Faculty Portal modules.
  • If you use the Case Review Module to solicit reference letters, the external referees you contact receive Dossier accounts--they upload their letters through Dossier. Some of your faculty may already have Dossier accounts if they have ever been asked to provide a reference letter through Interfolio for another institution.
  • You will not be able to access a faculty member's Dossier account. To access your own Dossier account, click on your name in the upper right corner after logging into the Feinberg Faculty Portal and select the Interfolio Dossier option.

Interfolio Resources
Feinberg partnered with an external vendor named Interfolio to implement the Feinberg Faculty Portal.

  • Help for Interfolio Dossier
    Dossier is a product that can be licensed by individuals, so some of the help pertains to that scenario. Feinberg faculty and staff do not incur a cost for using Dossier as part of the Feinberg Faculty Portal.
  • Help for Letter Writers
    These resources may be helpful to individuals who have been asked to provide a letter of reference via Interfolio.
  • Scholar Services
    Interfolio's Scholar Services team is available to provide technical assistance to faculty and staff users. Contact help@interfolio.com.
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