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Intelligence
The Value of Faculty Expertise

Intelligence

The Value of Faculty Expertise

Jun 26, 2015By mStoner Staff

Faculty expertise is one of the most valuable assets that any institution has.

Faculty are publishing, speaking, recording videos, winning awards, and appearing on television, radio and panels. This often isn’t being captured or, if it is, isn’t always making its way back out to the many people who would derive value from it.

Worse, the quality of information about these experts available on your own website typically ranges from nonexistent to average, at best. Sometimes there is a faculty directory or expert center, but the information within is incomplete, and the directory hard to find. Sometimes there isn’t any information at all. Sometimes the information is managed by the faculty themselves, appearing on their own blogs, websites, or LinkedIn, and not linked to your .edu site. Across the board, higher education could do a better job of showcasing faculty expertise and accomplishments.

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Remember, your faculty are some of the most knowledgeable and accomplished individuals in their respective fields. That knowledge and accomplishment are valuable to a number of people and for a number of reasons. Here are some of the most important ones:

Media

Journalists are busier than ever, and they are always in need of experts to speak on current news topics. University faculty are a primary source for interviews, articles and quotes — but journalists don’t have a lot of time to go digging into hard-to-find information. The easier you can make it for journalists to find your faculty and the clearer the information is, the more likely it is that they will tap your faculty for media spots and the more content you’ll have for your online news pools.

Internal Campus Communicators

Every college and university is trying to tell better stories, and in particular, stories that show tangible, positive outcomes. Faculty accomplishment is a primary content pool for outcomes storytelling, and quality, well-maintained faculty expert content makes the jobs of public relations and marketing staff at your institution that much easier. 

Just like journalists, institutional communications professionals are stretched for time and are more likely to produce and tell stories if they can cut down on the amount of effort it takes to research and procure those leads.

Prospective Graduate Students and Faculty

In the last few years, mStoner surveyed graduate students from several institutions. The most interesting finding is how critically important the faculty connection is for enrollment. 

In essence, we confirm what many admission officers know firsthand. Many graduate students identify the faculty member they want to work with first, before any decision on school is made. Prospective graduates look for shared research interests, current publications, upcoming speaking engagements, and ways to contact or meet that faculty member. 

Individuals looking for faculty positions follow a similar process, and want to know who their colleagues will be, what research they may collaborate on, and what opportunities they will have to improve their own standing once hired.

Improving the quality of faculty information and the ease with which prospective graduate students and faculty can find it could increase the number and fit of graduate and faculty applications.

Faculty Themselves

Faculty need a space to show the world what they have accomplished and record their interests and work. 

We frequently hear from communications staff that it’s difficult to get information from faculty on what they have been working on. We also hear from faculty that they’d love to share more, but don’t have time to go through a tedious, complicated process for sharing. The willpower is there on both sides, but the process and platform often stymie the best intentions. 

Focusing resources and energy on improving the faculty expert space and way information is updated will encourage more participation and lead to many of the benefits described above. In my next post on this topic, I’ll go into more detail on faculty expert centers, what kind of content should live there, and discuss ExpertFile, a solutions platform tailored to help institutions tackle this important challenge.