[AISWorld] Questions about digitization of promotion/tenure dossiers and their distribution to appropriate faculty members through the web.

[Kishore, Rajiv]

Dear Colleagues

Our school is considering a suggestion about digitizing promotion/tenure dossiers so anytime, anywhere access can be provided to the appropriate faculty members through the web. The rationale for this suggestion is that improved 24*7 access to promotion/tenure dossiers will allow faculty members to more fully go through the dossiers at their own convenience, and this in turn may increase meaningful faculty engagement during promotion/tenure meetings.

Obviously a major concern with such access is the confidentiality and security of the entire dossier, but particularly that of the outside letters. The dossiers should only be available to a select group of faculty members (tenured faculty only) for reading purposes only, and no one should be able to download dossiers for storage on their own devices and/or distribute them to others and/or post them on the web. It would be disastrous if outside letters somehow found their way to the web.

I have been asked by the school to prepare an initial feasibility report on this topic. I would appreciate hearing from you if your school utilizes, or earlier considered and did not adopt, a similar approach for giving access to promotion/tenure dossiers to appropriate faculty members. I would also appreciate any pointers you can provide in this context by way of suggestions for general or specific technical solutions for this problem and/or any specific issues that should be considered as we explore solutions for this problem.

Please respond to me directly and I will post a summary of the responses received to this list.

Best regards.

Rajiv

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Rajiv Kishore, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Management Science & Systems
School of Management
State University of New York at Buffalo
Buffalo, NY 14260-4000, USA
+1.716.645.3507 (Voice)
+1.716-645.6117 (Fax)
http://www.buffalo.edu/~rkishore
http://www.linkedin.com/in/rkishore
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