What is the Activities Form and what information does it contain?
Answer
The Activities Form is the area of myVITA where you keep track of professional activities, such as courses you’ve taught, scholarly contributions, committee service, mentoring, grants, professional development, and more. Some information is pre-loaded for you from the university’s records, including courses taught, grants and advising. In addition, if you used FAS (the Faculty Accomplishments System), these historical records were transferred into myVITA for your convenience. You may edit or delete these records at your discretion.
Courses Taught: This section represents the official records of courses taught from the UM Official Student System. The information in this section is view-only and cannot be edited. Change the date range to view the semesters or years you want to see.
Student Advising: This section represents the official records of advising from the UM Official Student System. The information in this section is view-only and cannot be edited. Change the date range to view the semesters or years you want to see.
Mentorship of Students, Interns, Residents, and Fellows: In this section, you can report any supervision and/or mentorship of undergraduates, graduate students, post-docs and others, including serving on graduate committees. (Mentorship of faculty should be reported in “Other Activities Related to Teaching.”) You can provide information about semester, student, project, and achievements. The Activity Classifications area allows you to further define roles and activities performed. This section also allows you to add attachments if needed.
Continuing Education: For this section, you can enter non-credit continuing education teaching activities that were delivered to external audiences. Most Extension teaching activities will be reported here. If a presentation was more scholarly in nature, consider adding it to "Scholarly Contributions and Creative Activities" under "Presentation."
Other Activities Related to Teaching: This section allows you to report your other teaching activities, such as curriculum development, and mentoring of other faculty in developing teaching methodologies, classroom technique, or curriculum development.
Scholarly Contributions and Creative Activities: Report your scholarly contributions, including articles, books, creative work, presentations, patents, and more. If you publish in Web of Science Core Collection journals, these records were loaded for you back to 2004. Click here to view the myVITA Scholarly Contributions getting started guide. Additionally, click here to view an FAQ about Scholarly Contributions and Creative Activities. Note: Conferences attended should be reported in the "Professional Development" section.
Grants: You may manually enter and update information about internal grants, gifts, and other funding not tracked by the UM Official Grants System. External grants in the UM Official Grants System have been transferred and are displayed as read-only records. Corrections or modifications of external grants can be managed by your Office of Sponsored Programs/Office of Research. Guidance on how to contact your grants office is included in the Help area of the Grants section of myVITA. Click here to view the myVITA Grants getting started guide.
Community Engagement, Broader Impacts and Outreach: This section captures information about the service you provide to a community that is related to your professional expertise. The more general service or volunteer events you contribute to the community should be listed under the “Volunteer Activities” section.
Service to Your Profession: In this section, list services provided to your profession outside of the university such as serving on boards, chairing committees, etc. Service using your professional expertise provided to the community is listed under the "Broader Impacts and Community Engagement" section.
University Committees: Using the organizational structure, locate the department of the committee. Select the committee(s) on which you serve and indicate your role. If your committee is not listed, select the department level from the organizational structure and manually type the committee name.
University Service (other than committees): In this section, you may report service to the university other than committee service. Examples may include a campus- or system-level search committee, a special task force appointment, program management, event coordination, adjudication, and drafting white papers or other documentation. Your department, college, or school may provide additional guidance.
Volunteer Activities (unrelated to your profession): This section is optional section, but allows you to demonstrate your volunteer activities and service to your community but is unrelated to your profession. Service using your professional expertise should be listed in the "Service to Your Profession" or "Broader Impacts and Community Engagement" sections.
Honors, Awards, and Recognitions: In this section, you can report your honors, awards, and recognitions earned for teaching, community development, research, economic development, etc. This section allows you to report any date range on honors received. Use the Grants section for reporting grants and contracts awarded.
Professional Development and Continuing Education (as a participant): This section captures information about your professional development efforts and includes conferences, symposia, and special training sessions you attended. You also may report continuing professional education, including those taken for CE credit toward a certification or re-certification.
Future Goals and Plans: This optional section allows you to share and/or store information about your short- or long-range goals.
FAS Historical Data: Student Advising (prior to Fall 2015): This section contains information imported from the FAS system.