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Faculty Activity Reporting (FAR) is the system by which faculty communicate their accomplishments each year across scholarship/creative activity, teaching, and service. It serves for faculty to make their activities visible and for faculty leadership to develop a full picture of faculty contributions at scale. As just one example, the category of fellowships, honors and awards will serve as a single source of information so that various groups on campus can amplify faculty successes (e.g., the Director of Faculty Awards, Development and External Affairs, the Office of the Provost, and unit-level marketing and communications teams). Faculty will no longer have to communicate their accomplishments to multiple audiences. In addition, FAR provides a systematic approach to the annual review process, which informs merit recommendations and professional development planning.

Major changes include the following:

1. Streamlining data entry such that the schools and college have uniquely tailored sites.
2. Simplifying data entry into fall/spring/summer instead of day/month/year.
3. Reducing the number of overall required fields.
4. Providing more auto-loading of information, including University-wide service.
5. Connecting with more search engines for auto-identification and auto-entry of scholarship and external funding.
6. Distinguishing between internal and external funding and awards.
7. Adding activity classifications aligned with university strategic goals (e.g., community engagement, international activity).
8. Generating CVs with discipline-specific guidelines.
9. Providing a standard window for entering data.
10. Providing direct access to the vendor for ongoing support.

Regular uploads of the following are provided for all faculty using PeopleSoft (my.smu.edu), the official system of record:

• Courses taught with enrollment numbers and terms.
• Basic profile information such as professional contact information, rank, degrees awarded, etc.
• Many types of scholarship that are accessed through publicly available sites.
• Annual University-level service activities (e.g., Faculty Senate service, standing University-wide governance committees).

No, course evaluations at 91���� are shared only between the faculty member and any relevant faculty leadership members (e.g., chairs, deans, provost) or authorized peer review committee members during the faculty promotion process. They are inside a separate system called EvaluationKit and are not loaded into FAR.

The University-wide deadline for uploading all "Activities" from the previous calendar year is January 15. Schools, colleges or departments might require earlier deadlines. The minimum University-wide required information in the FAR system includes the following categories in the “Activities” section:

• Scholarship and Creative Work (note: Conference Presentations are included in this section)
• External Funding
• Service
• Fellowships/Awards/Internal Funding
• Faculty Development Activities
• Annual Report of Outside Activities

Please check with your unit for more information about possible earlier deadlines or additional required information.

Please note that the basic information required in the above categories is needed for making merit recommendations. The annual review cycle and the merit recommendations will be impacted by incomplete information.

Beyond the basic required information outlined above, the following types of information are options for loading into the FAR system:

• Mentoring
• Consulting
• Professional Membership
• Individualized Student Instructional Activity
• Non-credit Instruction Taught
• Curriculum Development
• Other Relevant Information
• Non-91���� Courses Taught
• Multi-Year Plan

For faculty who are interested in CV generation, making use of any of these options that are relevant and meaningful in your discipline will enhance your CV output, as well as make your contributions visible to colleagues and faculty leadership. (Note – some of the information listed in this answer might be required by your particular unit and therefore not be considered optional – check with your area for guidelines.)

Effective January 2025, 91���� Policy 1.23 Conflict of Commitment stipulates that all faculty provide information about any potential conflicts of commitment that might need review. Similar to reporting on financial conflicts of interest that is required among a designated group of faculty and staff, reporting annually on “Outside Activities” is now a requirement across all 91���� employees. Faculty will use the FAR system to make their annual general disclosure by answering several yes/no questions related to potential sources of conflict of commitment. Any possible conflicts will be reviewed, and a potential management plan will be discussed with the faculty member.

It is highly recommended that faculty maintain their own record of accomplishments. Staff job descriptions do not typically include serving as proxies for faculty activity reporting. Additionally, faculty have access to bi-weekly FAR Touchpoints to learn to use the system.

There may be two types of incorrect information in the system:

1. Information that has been auto-populated from my.smu.edu. For this type of information, you must reach out to the faculty administrators or staff in your area who maintain this information in my.smu.edu (e.g., course schedules, degree information, office location). The information cannot be changed in FAR; it must be corrected in the official system of record by the unit most proximal to you. Weekly data loads from my.smu.edu to FAR will ensure the corrected information.
2. Information that was transferred from the former system (Digital Measures) into the new system (). We anticipate that there will be a “clean-up” period, during which you will need to make some adjustments to your information. There will be regular information sessions and touchpoints to provide you support during this period. The reasons for the need to clean transferred information range widely, with the most common reason due to gaps or empty data in the originating Digital Measures files.

Each school/college has the option to create its own institutional vita, which is determined by the leadership within that unit. Similarly, the University has an institution-wide template that draws upon the five main categories listed above. These templates are used for purposes such as discipline-specific compliance reporting, external communications, and internal information-sharing. Faculty can create their own personalized vita template and vita, per the .

Faculty have the option to toggle many aspects of the FAR report for privacy settings; also, as of fall 2025, 91���� has opted not to participate in the webpage integration function of Interfolio. For more information how to toggle privacy functions, either email help@interfolio.com or participate in the 45 minute course described on the .