In a recent Peer Spotlight webinar, Rice University shared how it is using InfoReady to streamline faculty awards and manage institution-wide processes more efficiently. Led by Devon Jones PhD, Faculty Lifecycle Manager in the Office of the Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, the session outlined how a centralized platform helps support faculty recognition, reduce administrative friction, and improve reporting. With a growing emphasis on efficiency and scalability under Rice’s current leadership and strategic plan, the university adopted InfoReady to unify disparate processes that previously spanned emails, file-sharing tools, and manual tracking—making meaningful data collection and longitudinal analysis far more attainable.
Devon described a dual portfolio of activities managed in InfoReady: internal, provost-level awards and external awards support, including limited submissions. With only two staff members to administer more than 200 external awards and a set of internal competitions each year, centralizing processes in InfoReady has been key to maintaining quality and speed. For internal faculty awards, Rice standardized requirements where possible and leveraged flexible features such as Form Designer, reviewer routing steps, and proxy submissions to handle variations without confusion. This approach enables data visibility across competitions, simplifies reviewer workflows, and supports consistent experiences for nominators and nominees.
Several examples illustrated how practical design choices translate into better outcomes. The Duncan Award, for instance, follows a multi-stage dean nomination and approval process entirely within InfoReady, eliminating version confusion and lost documentation. Nominations submitted to the wrong awards can be easily moved between competitions via the proxy feature, ensuring equitable review without an extra burden on nominators.
Another award, Outstanding Doctoral Advising, incorporates a preliminary “approval-style” review with custom labels (“Move Forward” and “Let’s Talk”), allowing the graduate dean to add context before committee review. Across these cases, Rice emphasized backward planning from decision dates and maintaining consistent requirements to support equitable evaluation and smooth timelines.
At the system level, the Vice Provost for Academic Affairs office serves as the global administrator and point of contact for campus units adopting InfoReady. After initially allowing rolling onboarding, the team is moving to an annual “enrollment period” aligned with procurement and budget cycles to reduce repeated training and contract work. Training focuses on use case fit, form designer as a default template, standardized labels for better reporting, and white-glove support on review and reporting design. Practical lessons learned include drawing review workflows before building them, testing frequently, using form designer for both applications and routing steps, and choosing “copy vs. template” based on whether the award is unique or one of several identical competitions.
Beyond awards, Rice University has expanded its use of InfoReady, including student scholarships, HR and administrative forms, bridge funding requests, progress reports, and surveys. Features such as directory lookup, Dynamic Profiles, and progress reports help close loops and maintain data integrity, while reporting tools simplify score analysis and stakeholder updates.
Devon showed how InfoReady can be a well-implemented, flexible platform serving as an institutional workhorse at Rice University by aligning units, decreasing administrative overhead, and ensuring consistent, equitable access to opportunities.