{"id":71187,"date":"2013-01-11T10:44:36","date_gmt":"2013-01-11T15:44:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=71187"},"modified":"2013-01-11T13:58:13","modified_gmt":"2013-01-11T18:58:13","slug":"health-center-faculty-directory-saves-time-and-reduces-repetition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2013\/01\/health-center-faculty-directory-saves-time-and-reduces-repetition\/","title":{"rendered":"Health Center Faculty Directory Saves Time and Reduces Repetition"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Khamis Abu-Hasaballah<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When Khamis Abu-Hasaballah<\/a>, assistant vice-president of research informatics, arrived at the UConn Health Center\u2019s IT Department, he was confronted with a long-standing problem that had been vexing faculty and administrators alike.<\/p>\n

\u201cA tremendous amount of time and energy is wasted just updating someone\u2019s CV,\u201d says Abu-Hasaballah. \u201cBut it\u2019s not only time consuming, it\u2019s disruptive, can lead to multiple, outdated electronic and paper copies that are hard to manage which can result in delays in meeting request deadlines.\u201d<\/p>\n

A current curriculum vitae is crucial for any faculty member and at the same time, administrators want to have access to a centralized repository of CV data where a list of publications, grant support and community service is readily available.<\/em><\/p>\n

Abu-Hasaballah and his IT team along with development staff started researching possible solutions. \u201cWe thought creating a Comprehensive Faculty Activity Registry (CFAR) would be a win-win. It would serve the faculty by streamlining the data management process for their CV\u2019s. It would also provide the administration access to reliable, up-to-date, complete data.\u201d<\/p>\n

They quickly realized that a commercial, \u201coff-the-shelf\u201d product would not be feasible nor offer all the options the Health Center would require.<\/p>\n

A \u201chome-grown\u201d system needed to be created. A committee of stakeholders including faculty members and administrators gathered together to talk about what they wanted in the system and how to go about making it a reality.<\/p>\n

Several months later they started the actual programming or coding of the system and one year later they had the first \u2013 albeit limited – version of the CFAR.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s quite a unique system\u201d says Abu-Hasaballah. \u201cThe only institution that has a similar system is the University of California-Davis. They have a similar system they use for their tenure track and promotion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along with having a large, comprehensive database of CV information, the CFAR can be used to automatically generate faculty websites, NIH biosketch templates, and performance appraisal template information.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was definitely designed with the faculty first and foremost in mind,\u201d says Abu-Hasaballah. \u201cAnd we now have enough data in the system that the faculty can go in and look at it and update it for accuracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Douglas
Douglas L. Oliver, Ph.D.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe idea was, let\u2019s find a way that we could avoid having to cut and paste the same information over and over again into our CV,\u201d says Doug Oliver<\/a>, professor of neuroscience and the first faculty member to try out the new system. \u201cIt comes down to money. If the administration feels like they can use the data to make judgments about progress and productivity and if the faculty feels they can use the data to argue in favor of a better raise – then the system will be used.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a community service, the IT staff will enter the data for faculty members if they send them their CV. They will also regularly update the information. For instance, once a month the IT staff checks PubMed, a database of biomedical journals, and downloads publications authored by Health Center faculty and add to the CFAR. And every week, they check the Office of Sponsored Research to see if they have any new grants that have been awarded to UConn faculty and input that information into the CFAR.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important to have a single source of truth,\u201d adds Abu-Hasaballah. \u201cWhen you introduce multiple systems you can have inaccuracies and problems so this way you have a single system that offers consistency, accuracy and the elimination of unnecessary tasks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Follow\u00a0the UConn Health Center<\/a> on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>,\u00a0Twitter<\/a> and\u00a0YouTube<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Comprehensive Faculty Activity Registry is receiving positive reviews for streamlining data and eliminating unnecessary work. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":71199,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[179,1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[45],"class_list":["post-71187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uconn-health","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-03 20:15:08","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71187"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71220,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71187\/revisions\/71220"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/71199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71187"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=71187"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=71187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}