College of Arts and Sciences Guidelines for Using Watermark Faculty Success/Digital Measures
What is Watermark Faculty Success/Digital Measures?
Who Must Enter Information Into Watermark Faculty Success?
How Do I Enter My Information?
Guidelines for Individual Screens
Creating a Promotion and/or Tenure Report From Your Data
What Is Watermark Faculty Success/Digital Measures?
Watermark Faculty Success (formerly known as Digital Measures) is a private company that provides a web-based faculty reporting service. The University contracts with Watermark Faculty Success to provide a browser interface to collect and store faculty information on teaching, research, service, as well as biographical and other data. Watermark Faculty Success claims to secure all data by backing it up at its main datacenter every five minutes, and to create nightly backups of all data at two off-site secure locations.
Who Will Have Access to the Information I Enter into Watermark Faculty Success, and How Will it be Used?
In addition to yourself, the Office of Academic Affairs and the Arts and Sciences Dean’s Office will have access to the information you enter into Watermark Faculty Success. Other faculty, or persons outside of the University, will not normally be able to access your data. However, at certain times, such as when you apply for tenure or promotion, some faculty will be allowed to access some of your Watermark Faculty Success data. Authorized faculty in such cases may include:
• Members of your Department’s promotion and tenure review committees.
• Members of the College Promotion and Tenure Review Committees.
• Your Department Chair.
Your chair may be granted access at other times as well for review purposes.
The Office of Academic Affairs or the Dean’s Office may also share some of your information with parties who have a legitimate interest in accessing it.
Concerning their use of data, Watermark Faculty Success states the following:
“Your personal information will never be released, sold or shared by Digital Measures with parties other than your academic institution and parties that we use to provide the technical services that we do. When we must share data with these parties, we establish legally-binding confidentiality agreements and non-disclosure agreements to protect the shared data.”
Who Must Enter Information into Watermark Faculty Success?
All full-time USA faculty members under Academic Affairs are being asked to begin using Watermark Faculty Success for tenure, promotion, and mid-probationary review starting in academic year 2014-5. Also, future Faculty Activity Reports may be drawn from Watermark Faculty Success, so all faculty will need to begin recording information into Watermark Faculty Success.
Faculty members will be individually responsible for entering their data into Watermark Faculty Success, except for some teaching and biographical information that has been entered for you.
• Faculty members who are applying for tenure or promotion, or who will be undergoing mid-probationary review:
You must insure that your Watermark Faculty Success portfolio include all information needed to build a tenure, promotion, or mid-probationary review report in the fall of 2014. This report will be substantially similar to the materials requested in the portfolio that candidates for tenure, promotion, or mid-probationary review have submitted in the past. This means that all teaching, research, and creative activities, as well as all service and all self-evaluation statements relevant to candidate’s application must be entered into Digital Measures prior to the portfolio submission deadline. The current Arts and Sciences Tenure and Promotion Statement of Procedures and Criteria, or the equivalent Statement for promotion to Senior Instructor, will help direct you to the fields most important for the tenure, promotion, and mid-probationary report.
• Faculty members not applying for tenure, promotion, or mid-probationary review:
You are nonetheless asked to begin entering your data into Watermark Faculty Success. Remember that future Faculty Activity Reports may be generated from information entered into Watermark Faculty Success.
How do I enter my information?
1. Go to the Watermark Faculty Success log-in screen at:
https://login.watermarkinsights.com/connect/universityofsouthalabama
Watermark uses a Single Sign On (SSO). Your log-in information is the same as your university email log-in.
2. Once you are logged-in, you will see links to guides and videos for using Watermark Faculty Success. To start entering information, click on “Manage My Activities”. This will take you to a list of “screens”, which are divided-up into five groups: General Information, Teaching, Scholarship/Research, Service, and Promotion/Tenure/Annual Goals. Click on a screen name in a group.
3. Click “Add A New Item”.
4. You should now see the screen with a series of fields and pull-down menus. Some fields may already be completed for you (e.g., in General Information), but most likely are not.
5. Begin filling in your information. We provide some suggestions below to simplify the process.
All faculty under Academic Affairs will be using the same screens to enter data, regardless of college. This means that some screens, or some fields within screens, may include queries that are not relevant to you.
While the screens are common to all faculty under Academic Affairs, some reports generated from these screens will be unique to each college. Thus, Arts and Sciences has its own Faculty Activity Report, as in the past.
For most faculty members, completing all the required screens and fields is likely to be time consuming, although as noted above, not all fields and screens must be completed by all faculty. For this reason, the College is asking faculty to begin entering biographical data, and teaching, research and service information for the current academic year first.
Faculty members planning to apply for promotion, tenure, or mid-probationary review in the current academic year must complete their Watermark Faculty Success portfolio to the same level of completeness as they would a tenure, promotion, or mid-probationary review portfolio. Reading the portfolio section of the College of Arts and Sciences Tenure and Promotion Statement of Procedures and Criteria will help you identify what you will need to enter for promotion, tenure, or mid-probationary review purposes. Additionally, you can run a Promotion and Tenure Report for yourself at any time, in order to see how the data you have entered appears in the report.
As you become comfortable entering data into Watermark Faculty Success, please begin working back in time to complete your past teaching, research, and service accomplishments.
Here are some suggestions to help with the data entry process:
1. Some Data Has Been Entered For You
Most information must be entered manually, however, sections of courses you have taught since Spring, 2010 has been entered for you into the Scheduled Teaching Screen, and some personal and administrative information fields have also been completed beforehand.
2. Entering Dates
Many screens ask you to submit dates for a variety of items. If you know the specific date, please enter it. If you do not know it, you can still enter the month and year data without entering the day.
Date ranges can be entered (e.g., for Committee service where you have served for several consecutive years).
3. Cutting and Pasting from Other Sources
You can cut and paste information from other sources such as your CV. The most reliable way to do this is to use the PasteBoard, which is visible as a tab on the lower right on most screens. When you click on the tab, the PasteBoard opens as an area where you can paste items from other sources such as Word or PDF documents. Once an item is pasted to the PasteBoard, you can more easily again cut and paste those portions you need to fill-in individual fields.
Note that the PasteBoard also standardizes the formatting to that required by Digital Measures' fields.
4. Importing Data Files from Other Sources
The Intellectual Contributions screen allows you to import citations of your work that are stored in other places, potentially saving you time. If you have a number of citations, it is likely that at least some of them appear on Google Scholar, Scopus, RefWorks, or one of the other online citation sources. These sources and others can be imported into Watermark Faculty Success.
For most sources, the citation data must first be converted to a BibTeX file.
BibTeX is a reference file management format. Digital Measures gives step-by-step instructions for converting your citations from a source like Google Scholar or Scopus into a BibTeX file and uploading it to Watermark Faculty Success. To see these instructions, go to the Intellectual Contributions screen, and click on “Import Items”. Under Option A, at the end of the second sentence, click on "this link":
5. Guidelines for Individual Screens
While the fields on most screens should be reasonably self-explanatory, the following guidelines may be of assistance:
General Information Screens
Please fill out any screens or fields that apply to you. Some of the General Information screens may not apply to all faculty members, such as Consulting, Licensures and Certifications, and Media Contributions.
Note that some of the fields in the Permanent Data and Administrative Data screens cannot be changed by you.
Place Graduate Faculty Membership on the Service, University screen. Enter "Graduate Faculty" as Committee Name and choose "Committee Member" as Position/Role.
Place Faculty Senate Service on the Service, University screen. Enter "Faculty Senate" as Committee Name and choose "University Senate Service" under Position/Role.
Teaching Screens
Directed Student Learning Screen
Use this screen for theses, dissertations, internships, honors theses, or other student learning or student committees you have directed or served on.
Do not enter directed studies courses on this screen. Directed studies courses should be listed in your Scheduled Teaching screen. However, if you have Directed Studies students who also do additional work with you, such as supervised research, you can enter them on the Directed Student Learning screen as well.
If you are on a Departmental Comprehensive Exam Committee, place this in the Service, Department screen, not the Directed Student Learning Screen.
If you are a Program Director, such as a graduate program coordinator or similar role that does not involve administrative reassigned time, place this work on the Directed Student Learning screen. Select "Other" for involvement type and describe the nature of the program you direct.
Scheduled Teaching Screen
At this time, data for courses you have taught back to spring, 2010, including Directed Studies courses, should be entered for you (exception: some applied music courses must still be manually entered). You can enter courses you have taught at USA earlier if you wish – this is recommended for applicants for tenure or promotion in order to insure your portfolio is complete.
- Reports on scheduled teaching are run automatically only for courses taught in the College of Arts and Sciences. If you have taught a course at USA but outside of A&S, contact Paula Medveal in Academic Affairs to have the course added to your scheduled teaching.
-The fields asking for descriptions of pedagogical innovations and so on are optional at this time, but note that the reports built for Tenure and Promotion and FAR reports will draw on these fields, so enter pedagogical innovations where appropriate for tenure and promotion.
-The Store File items for Syllabi and Representative Materials are optional for past courses, but please begin to upload these items for current courses.
-Digital copies of your Teaching Evaluations to upload for recent years should be available from your Department Chairperson. If not, contact Dr. Crystal Thomas in the Dean’s Office for copies.
- It is currently not necessary to enter the number of students earning various grades for previous years, but begin entering this number with the current academic year.
- If you are applying for promotion or tenure, or are going through Mid-Probationary Review, please upload digital copies of your teaching evaluations from past courses taught at USA, where available.
Scholarship, Research, and Creative Activities Screens
Artistic and Professional Performances and Exhibits Screen
Fine Arts faculty will enter their creative contributions on this screen. Note that scholarly contributions such as journal articles or books by Fine Arts faculty should be entered on the Intellectual Contributions screen.
Editorial and Review Work. There are several places where editorial and review work can be entered, including Editorial and Review Activities, Professional Service, and Intellectual Contributions. Please observe the following guidelines.
Editorial and Review Activities Screen
Use this screen to record work you did that was not published under your name. (Exception: If you are editor of a journal, enter it here even if the journal is published under your name as editor.)
Blind or peer reviewing work, invited reviews that are not published under your name, and editorial work not published under your name should be included on this screen.
•If you edit a book or monograph, and that document is, or is intended to be, published under your name, and it includes content that you authored (such as an introduction), include this on Intellectual Contributions screen instead of the Editorial and Review Activities screen. Select "Editor" as your role in the Author/Editor box.
•If you publish, or intend to publish, a review of another work under your name, include this on the Intellectual Contributions screen instead. Select "Book Review" from the Publication Type Pull-Down menu.
• Work done on a review board, or similar, should be placed on the Professional Service screen (see below), not the Editorial and Review Activities screen.
| Type of Editorial or Review Activity | Screen to Use to Enter Activity |
| Peer or blind journal article reviewing, performance or exhibition reviewing | Editorial and Review Activities |
| Grant review board service | Professional Service |
| Book editor: book is published under your name as editor | Intellectual Contributions |
| Book reviewer, or editorial work for a book not published under your name | Editorial and Review Activities |
| Journal editor | Editorial and Review Activities |
Intellectual Contributions Screen
Include here items which you have authored or co-authored, and which are published or intended for publication as a part of your professional activities. This would include journal articles, books, monographs, book chapters, reviews published under your name, or volumes you edit and which are published under your name.
-Be sure to add all co-authors for co-authored materials. Watermark Faculty Success tracks author position (1st, 2nd, etc.), so enter these in correct order.
Collaborative contributions: If you have collaborated with other faculty members on text-based contributions, the first author to enter the citation creates the entry for ALL of the collaborating authors, saving time and effort for all the authors.
- If a digital version of the document is available to you, upload it to the Store File query.
-Provide submission and acceptance dates only if these are available to you.
-Material that has been submitted for publication but not yet accepted or published, or which is nearing submission, can be entered on the Intellectual Contributions screen. However, make only one entry per item, and update the entry as the item’s status changes (e.g., accepted, rejected, etc.).
-Material in an earlier stage of preparation, such as ongoing research or scholarly projects that are not nearing completion or submission, should be entered on the Research Currently in Progress screen.
Contracts, Fellowships, Grants, and Sponsored Research
Grants or Fellowships that you applied for can be included on this screen, even if they were not funded. Under Current Status, select "Not Funded". Work that you have invested in unsuccessful grant applications should nonetheless be recorded.
Service Screens
Dates may be entered as ranges if you have served on a committee or similar for several successive years, rather than creating a new item entry for each year of service.
Service, University Screen
Place Graduate Faculty Membership on the Service, University screen. Enter "Graduate Faculty" as Committee Name and choose "Committee Member" as Position/Role.
Place Faculty Senate Service on the Service, University screen. Enter "Faculty Senate" as Committee Name and choose "University Senate Service" under Position/Role.
Service, Professional Screen.
This screen has the option to enter editorial work under the pull-down for "Position/Role". Use this pull down option only for editorial or review work you have done in your role as a part of a professional organization or committee, such as service done as a member of a review board. For editorial work you do individually, use either the Editorial and Review Activities or Intellectual Contributions screens.
Promotion, Tenure, and Annual Goals Screens
The College of Arts and Sciences does not require that you fill out the Annual Goals screen for the purposes of promotion or tenure.
The Self-Evaluation statement screens are to be completed for applicants for tenure, promotion, or mid-probationary review. Note that the Teaching Philosophy and Goals field of the Teaching Self-Evaluation Statement screen is currently not a part of the A&S Promotion and Tenure Report.
Note that applicants for promotion to Senior Instructor have their own Self-Evaluation screen.
Creating a Promotion and/or Tenure Report From Your Data.
Candidates for promotion and/or tenure must run a Promotion and/or Tenure Report in Watermark Faculty Success. Instructions:
1. Log-in to Watermark Faculty Success.
2. Click “Run Custom Reports”
a. Item 1. Select “Promotion and/or Tenure Report” from the drop-down list, click “select report.”
b. Item 2 .Select the date range.
c. Item 3. Click on“Click here” then “individual” and select your name.
d. Item 4. Select the file format as Microsoft Word.
e. Item 5. Select the page size as Letter.
f. Click on “Build Report.”
3. You will receive an MS Word file that you can edit.
Candidates for Promotion only: The Arts and Sciences Tenure and Promotion Statement of Procedures and Criteria states that: "A candidate should clearly distinguish materials produced before and after the last promotion". To do this in your Watermark Faculty Success Promotion and Tenure report, after you have generated the report, open it in Word and add boldface to those Teaching, Research and Professional Development, and Service items produced since your last promotion.