About

Michigan State University's Academic Profile (AP) is a web-based application that allows faculty and academic staff to track their accomplishments easily and consistently. With AP, faculty and academic staff can easily view, edit, and report their accomplishments. Auto-generated reports make it easy to track your progress and prepare for annual reviews, continuation, or reappointment, promotion, and tenure. Colleges and departments also have access to additional tools and support for institutional reporting. The AP team is committed to providing support across all academic specialties.

• What is Academic Profile/Watermark Faculty Success?
  Watermark Faculty SuccessTM, hereafter referred to as the Academic Profile (AP), is a hosted software solution (online database). AP is a secure and reliable web-based tool for faculty to collect, manage and report their teaching, research, creative and service activities, along with their accomplishments and professional activities. Watermark makes web-based software for higher education.
• How is my data protected in Academic Profile?
  Watermark Faculty Success has taken many steps to create a safe environment for your information while ensuring access to your data.
  
  All data provided by and collected for the Michigan State University by Watermark are solely owned by the Michigan State University. As per the terms in Watermark service agreement, your data cannot be disclosed, reused, sold, or disseminated in any way by Watermark. Further, Watermark legally agrees to take steps to protect your confidential data just as we would any confidential data belonging to us.
  
  To read more about how Watermark handles the security of the data, click here. To read more about data privacy, click here.
• Who can see data in Academic Profile?
  You, your academic leadership chain, and other university-level administrators responsible for fulfilling various reporting needs can view data in AP. Security roles are assigned to each individual based on their need to have access to faculty information. Security role configurations include:
  
  Faculty are able to view and run reports on their own data.
  
  Department heads/directors and their staff designees are able to view data and run reports for the individuals in their own department.
  
  Deans and their staff designees are able to view data and run reports for the individuals in their own college.
  
  Designated individuals in the Provost's Office are able to see data and run reports for everyone on campus.
• Who are current faculty users of AP?
  All faculty including non-tenure, tenured, tenure-track, and ranked, renewable-term faculty.
• How do date fields work within AP?
  When entering your activities it is important to complete the date fields as the reports you run will ask for a date range. Screens with a date field will prompt you to add a date and will not allow you to leave a screen until you have entered a date.
  
  Note: For activities that are/were only on one day, leave the start date blank and specify the end date. For activities that you have started but have not yet completed, specify the start date and leave the end date blank.
• Can we prepare CVs in AP?
  Yes, a Vita report is available for faculty, along with the ability to make customizable CVs.
• How long will data remain in the system?
  All information entered into FAS remains in the database. Even though our faculty change over time, keeping information for those individuals who are no longer with the campus is still important for preparing accurate historical reports on our campus' productivity.
• Once my information is in the system how is the data used?
  The most common use of the system will be for faculty members to run the Annual Review report. Reports can be run in Microsoft Word, as Adobe PDFs or in HTML. Word documents are editable and sections may be copied for other uses that faculty may have.
• How do I get data out of AP?
  There are two ways to get data out of AP: Custom reports, that have been created for faculty, college and university administrators, and ad hoc reports, available to directors/deans and staff representatives. The “Create a New Report” tool allows you to easily select the exact data elements you would like from the system.
• What screens have data imported?

  Permanent Data

  Yearly Data

  Personal & Contact Information

  Education

  Graduate Committees

  Credit Courses at MSU

  Sponsored Programs-Administered by MSU

  Patents at MSU

• Some of my publications have been entered by another faculty member. How does that work?
  If you have collaborated with other Michigan State University faculty members on text-based contributions, the first author to enter the citation creates the entry for all the collaborating authors, saving time and effort for all the authors. The entry author is the ‘owner’ of the record. The authors display on the record detail under Contributors in their own portion of the screen. The ‘owner’ of the record is able to edit the record. If the record is linked to another Michigan State University faculty member the record displays as:
  
  Entered by: Test Record Name
  
  FAS Shared Publication Entry on the Books, Journals and Other Text-Based Contributions summary page. Digital Measures calls this linking collaborators screen functionality: User Reference. The Presentation and Guest Lecture, Exhibits and Performance, Creative Works, Sponsored Programs - Administered by MSU SPA, MSU Internal Awards and Other Funding screens also have linked User Reference.
• Can I give someone access to my account to enter data for me?
  University policy is that passwords are not shared. We can create a proxy account for someone and then assign security roles to an individual user so they can enter data for you or run reports for you. Please complete the Proxy Permission Form found on the Academic Profile homepage.