Instructions for AFR Submission
1. Check Yes to certify that your AFR is ready for review.
2. Enter the date of submission.
3. Click Save.
Clicking Save will submit your AFR. No further action is required. The AFR will be automatically loaded into APWS. Once the system completes the upload, you will receive an email confirmation with a link to verify your submission in APWS.
Please note:
- It may be two or three business days before your files have been loaded into APWS and your receive notification.
- The AFR submission deadline has passed. The team will continue to load late AFRs weekly, as needed.
- What is the Faculty Success Project?
- Project Status
- Project Team, Organization, and Contacts
- Telling Your Story in the New AFR
What is the Faculty Success Project?
Project Mission
The vision of the Faculty Success Project is to develop a robust system for UMass Amherst faculty to efficiently track their research, teaching, and service efforts. Once entered in Watermark, this organized professional information can be deployed for multiple purposes, including generation of custom CVs, Bio sketches, and public-facing web pages, to better characterize research, teaching, and service activities, and facilitate the annual faculty review. The Faculty Success Project Team will be working with and interviewing a broad array of faculty and staff to outline a process that addresses:
- Documentation of research, creative activities, teaching, and service
- Curriculum vitae management
- Research networking
- Annual Faculty Review
Guiding Principles
The Faculty Success Team has established the following guiding principles for this project:
- A single point of entry represents an ideal state for the faculty user interface
- Facilitation of faculty research, networking, CV development, scholarly and artistic activity, as well as annual faculty review
- Faculty to retain control over their public profiles
- Ensure accurate and timely reporting
- Wherever possible, reduce the administrative burden (of both staff and faculty) via processes and systems interface
- Customization to be kept at a minimum to reduce impact on future IT support
- The implementation process and communication is broad, open, and inclusive
- Solutions should be agile and responsive to future business needs and requirement
Project Status
We’re Live!
The Faculty Success Project has officially launched, marking a major milestone in our commitment to improving usability and functionality for faculty. This go-live reflects the successful implementation of the Advisory Committee’s feedback, which shaped key areas such as navigation and end-user experience.
You can read the full go-live announcement here.
For those who want to revisit the journey, you can still access the information session PowerPoint or watch the zoom presentation (Passcode: Q6fEsPj=) from April 14, 2025 which includes details on the AFR report configuration leading up to launch.
Project Contacts
Katharine Bader, Business Architect
Keisha Pendleton, Senior Project Manager
Project Team and Organization
See the full project team and organization.
Telling Your Story in the New AFR
The Annual Faculty Report and Evaluation (AFR) is an opportunity for faculty to showcase their teaching, advising, research and creative activity, outreach, and service as appropriate to their appointment. It is a way to reflect on your work’s impact and meaning and to share that story with departmental and other colleagues during annual review, contract renewal, and promotion. All faculty members with an appointment at 50% FTE or greater are required to submit their 2024–25 AFR by November 15, 2025.
These sessions provide a supportive space for faculty to share different approaches, ask questions, and get started. Whether you are completing an AFR for the first time, curious about how the new Faculty Success System works, or interested in how the Faculty Success System will help you tell the story of your work in a new way, faculty of all career stages are welcome and encouraged to attend.