Development of a system to collect information on faculty work. I was involved in
the development of the initial database design and concept for data collection forms. In
cooperation with a team initially head by Ches Martin and currently headed by Linda
Montgomery at DCIT, the Faculty Activity System was created and tested in the spring of
1998. Revisions were completed during the summer and the system will be available to the
entire faculty in the fall of 1998. Any employee can view the application Home Page. Faculty could access the system beginning 15
September 1998. As a part of the system I was assigned the development of the Help files. In
addition, I developed a static model of the system that was used for demonstrations at
training sessions across campus. This was needed because not all meeting sites had access
to the Web site for the real application. This project was presented at the 1998 Annual SAIR Conference in
Savannah, GA. An update on the progress of the project was given at the 1999
Annual SAIR Conference in Chattanooga, TN. Both the PowerPoint presentation and the
proposal paper are available
from this site.
Historical Archives. The Office of Institutional Research has maintained historical
databases to support the University Fact and various analyses of University business. Some
of this information supports required reporting to State and Federal government agencies,
including the State Commission on Higher Education. Recently, Clemson began a project to
develop a business intelligence system and initially financial information has been moved
into this system. This has resulted in substantial improvements in administrative information
that is consistent at all levels of the University. It should improve budgetary control
and improve communication across the University. The project will continue to incorporate
additional information resourses, including human resources and instructional data in the
future.
Monitoring faculty credentials. Credentials for all faculty are
periodically monitored and reports are prepared for administrative units and to support
Performance Funding measurements that affect State funding. This application was initialy
developed in MS Access. More recently, the data has been moved to a MySQL database and some
of the functions have been moved to a secure web
server to enhance communication between the central office and college staff responsible for
gathering credentials documentation.
Survey of specific general education competencies. As Clemson University moves
toward fully integrating general education within discipline programs, we need
to determine which specific competencies are being supported by courses included
in each program. The original survey application allowed some oversight of the support for
general education competencies, but keeping it current was difficult. Therefore, it has been
folded into a syllabus repository that should support this information as well as providing
access to syllabi for current and future students.
Faculty Book. This web application was designed to provide a searchable database
that would allow members to find others with similar interests. It includes an entry
from each member, describing their primary interests and supports searches for words in
these entries as well as any title for a grant or proposal. We hope that it will be of
value as we replace a large number of faculty over the next few years.
![[CLEMSON TIGER]](http://people.clemson.edu/~westc/images/tiger.gif)
![[My picture]](http://people.clemson.edu/~westc/images/wickes.jpg)