Students, faculty and staff in the public health school will have an easier time filling out forms and finding academic resources.
Officials in the public health school’s communications department created The Source – an online resource for public health students, faculty and staff – this semester. They said they wanted to build a database that could serve as a go-to source for administrative documents.
Faculty, staff and students can access academic resources, student support services and other forms on the website. Before officials launched the site, people had to search different parts of the public health school’s general website or collect paperwork from individual administrative offices.
Catherine Goetz, the student career consultant at the public health school, said the site houses information on topics like graduate living, student support services, academic resources, admissions, graduation information, career services and student calendars.
“It is taking all of the things that are most pertinent to current students and moving them to one place,” Goetz said.
Stacey DiLorenzo, the executive director of communications at the public health school, said in an email that the school’s dean, Lynn Goldman, and other senior leadership at Milken originally wanted to provide convenient resources to members of the school.
She said some students had complained that it was difficult to find “lesser used, but still important resources,” and this new database will solve that issue.
DiLorenzo added that the site can be updated easily and regularly, and that it is personally tailored to each user, allowing them to save specific resources on their personal dashboards.
“So far the feedback we have received has been overwhelmingly positive,” DiLorenzo said. “It is our goal to have all of our students, faculty, researchers and staff use The Source and we are dedicated to continually evolving the resource.”
Corinne Hyde, an assistant professor of clinical education at the University of Southern California, said online databases are useful for students and faculty because they consolidate information in one location.
“When you have the advantage of cost saving on the part of the student and the faculty member and you have the advantage of timeliness, things are just going to be quicker to update and more relevant because they are in a digital format,” Hyde said.
Jayson Richardson, an assistant professor of educational leadership studies at the University of Kentucky, said resource databases are especially helpful to new faculty because they streamline administrative tasks.
“We need to do a better job with on-boarding faculty,” Richardson said. “It makes things a lot easier, less cumbersome and more natural.”
