Dr. Gerardo Maupome, professor at the Fairbanks School of Public Health, began a faculty fellow project with the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research in January. This project is an adjunct to the larger effort and vision to enhance the way IUPUI’s leaders strategically benchmark school and department progress, retain faculty, and strategically make decisions using data. This blog details the progress and future work of the project by Dr. Maupome.

In January 2017, I began my fellowship with the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research. One central task was to help chart a roadmap to implement campuswide evaluation procedures. Our goal was to find a system to help IUPUI leaders, down to the individual faculty member, increase accountability and help IUPUI reach its full potential as a research university. To do this, Academic Analytics, a comprehensive database system primarily focused on United States and United Kingdom universities, was found to fit our needs.

Academic Analytics, as the name implies, provides high-quality, custom intelligence data and solutions for research universities. They compile data into a comprehensive database that includes over 270,000 faculty members associated with more than 9,000 Ph.D. programs and 10,000 departments at more than 385 universities in the United States and abroad.

The data allows comparisons at the university, school, department, and individual levels. Primarily, the Academic Analytics Database gathers data from pertinent research institutions, including:

• Publication of scholarly work as books and journal articles
• Citations to published journal articles
• Research funding by federal agencies
• Number of journal articles, citations, books, grants by faculty members
• Dollar amount awarded from grants
• Honorific awards

In addition to the comprehensive database, Academic Analytics employs a team of analysts to help provide a tailored reports from the school level down to each individual faculty member. As we understood that each department is different, with a varying number of faculty and different focuses, these reports allow each department to pick out the most important information for them and easily integrate them into their strategic discussions.

It is also encouraging to see the successes of other large research universities implementing Academic Analytic reports throughout various aspects of their review, planning, and recognition procedures. Several of these universities, including the University of Utah and the University of Missouri-Columbia have effectively integrated data into their annual program reviews, faculty retention practices, academic planning, budget discussions, and recognition programs.

The Vice Chancellor for Research office and I are excited by the variety of possibilities that this data can be used for, from the uses in departmental and individual review, to recognizing faculty excellence and retaining invaluable faculty members. Over the past months, meetings have commenced with school administrators to discuss the benefits Academic Analytics has, and how they can be best implemented throughout campus. Stayed tuned for more exciting updates to this exciting project!