Checklist for Faculty: Beginning a New Academic Year

• myCourses
   
• RIT Student Information System (SIS)
   
• RIT email
   
• COLA Google Drive
  • Index

• Get syllabus development guidance from RIT Center for Teaching and Learning.  
   
• Check your syllabus policies.
   
• Send your syllabus to your department staff assistant.
   
• Upload your syllabus/syllabi to myCourses.
   
• For those teaching fully online, please ensure you have a student identity verification plan in place for your course.
   
• Check to make sure you have all textbook and course materials available via Akademos, listed on myCourses and on your syllabus. Instructors seeking support should check out the FAQs for help content and videos or contact success@vitalsource.com for assistance with adoptions, student issues, or any other questions.

• Double check that interpreters, captionists, and other support staff are added to your myCourses course pages. This usually happens automatically, but it’s good to check. For questions about anything accessibility-related, check out the RIT accessibility page.
   
• Review RIT accessibility resources from the Center for Teaching and Learning as you finalize your syllabi and course assignments for the semester.

• Review all Disability Services plans from the Disability Services Office (DSO) and approve or reject via the link in the DSO email. More information can be found on the DSO webpage.

• COLA Faculty and Staff Resources webpage
   
• COLA Google Drive. 
  • Ensure you have access. Bookmark these resources so you can find them easily in the future.
  • Access forms, policies, and processes for COLA faculty and staff
    • COLA policies (combined with index)
       

Scholarship Resources:

• COLA internal funding opportunities (COLA Google drive) 
   
• Sponsored Research Services, including links to RAPID and Novelution
   
• Human Subjects Research Office
   
• Provost’s Learning Innovation Grants

Human Resources links:

• RIT Benefits, including health care, life insurance, retirement, education benefits, paid time off, accommodations, work/life balance, and retirement.
   
• Oracle access, including conflict of interest statements, reimbursements, vacation/sick time, payroll direct deposit, change tax withholding, and view paystubs.

Annual requirements: 

• Trainings through Talent Roadmap: You will be notified of required trainings by email, and you can see your required courses by logging in to Talent Roadmap and viewing “My Plan.”
   

Annual Review / Merit process: 

• Review the process for annual review for faculty (including templates for Merit (TT and NTT) and Plan of Work).
   

COLA policies:  

• Review the clickable index of COLA policies, including administrative policies and academic policies.

• Add task item deadline reminders to your calendar or task list for routine academic administration functions such as internal funding requests, promotion/tenure deadlines, and more.
   
• Subscribe to COLA Events Calendar on Outlook
  • Open Calendar
  • Choose ‘From Address Book’
  • Type in Liberal Arts (the email associated with that is libarts@rit.edu)
     
• Download the COLA Year-at-a-Glance Events Calendar (pdf)
   
• RIT Academic Calendar

Faculty:

• Add COLA Faculty meetings and relevant unit meetings to your calendars. Outlook invites for all COLA Faculty meetings were sent out over the summer.
   

Chairs and Program Directors:

• Schedule unit meetings for the semester and send reminders for important unit or program events.
   
• Make sure you can access COLA Chair and Program Director Google Drive of resources and have reviewed the index for relevant folders.
   
• Print or save the academic deadlines for Chairs/PDs for reference. Add relevant dates to your Outlook calendar.