Whether you’re working on your next publication, conducting interviews, recruiting, or raising funds, an up-to-date website will help you achieve your goal.
Faculty Pages Versus Faculty Websites
First, let’s figure out what you need to work with.
Reading: How to create a faculty website
Most university teachers have a page on their institution’s website. These pages typically contain basic information, including a portrait photo, brief biography, department and contact information.
Faculty pages can be difficult to update unless you control your page directly. To make changes, you may need to update the faculty directory that operates the site or submit a change request form or IT ticket. It can be a long process.
The university usually also controls the design of the faculty page and the URL that you receive. This is to provide visitors with a consistent web and brand experience.
But there is a bright spot. There is usually a place on your faculty page where you can link to a website that you control.
You need two things to make this website great:
- A URL where your website will be saved. Many faculty members use their name as a custom domain. Think about how you want to build your brand within the academic community and buy this domain.
- A website building platform to control what your website says, how it looks and who can edit it. OpenScholar is built with faculty and researchers in mind, so you can quickly share working papers, presentations, and publications and increase your citations.
5 parts of a great faculty website
At OpenScholar, we power tens of thousands of websites for research institutions, including Harvard University. When teachers create websites on the platform, we find that they share the same five categories of information. We’ve built these into our Faculty Website Templates to help you get started with your website. You can apply the same best practice categories to any faculty website.
1. About Us
See also: Why is WordPress Free? What are the Costs? What is the Catch?
The About Us section contains an overview of your professional academic history, a formal biography and a downloadable CV.
2. Research
The Research section contains a list of the topics you want to do research on and the work you want to present. Collect and share your most important work in all formats and phases, from working papers, slides, lectures and podcasts to journal publications, patents and software. The more content you share, the more visible you are online.
3. Teach
See also: How to Create a Chat Room Website of Your Own with WordPress
The Teaching and Learning section is where you connect with current and prospective students. Add current and past course listings, course materials, and job openings for graduate students or other staff who would like to teach with you.
4. Other Hobbies, Passions & Activities
What makes you you? What else do you spend your time doing? We see teachers sharing their original work, including books, art, music, reading lists, and more.
5. Contact Think broadly about who you want to contact. Students who have class-specific questions, graduate students who want to study with you, researchers who want to collaborate, companies who want to hire you as consultants, publishers who want to share their discoveries, grantees who want to fund your work, and the general public, who wants your advice. State directly how you can get in touch with us (email, telephone, social media, email newsletter) and make it clear what options you are currently interested in. If your personal academic website is going to be your main web presence, make sure you link to it from all other places you are active. This can include Twitter, Youtube, Substack, your podcast and more.
When should I start?
We often see faculty improving their website before they release a major project. But you shouldn’t wait. Now is a good time to invest in yourself, expand your reach, and connect with the public not just as a professor, but as a diverse citizen of the world.
Getting started is quick and easy. Sign up for your personal OpenScholar website here.
See also: How to Register a Domain Name (and get it for FREE) in 2023
.
