Through Faculty Profiles, a software managed by UAB IT, the department helped organize publication records as part of the UAB Heersink School of Medicine’s journey to LCME accreditation this year.  

LCME, the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, is recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as the accrediting body for medical education programs leading to an M.D. degree in the United States and Canada. Receiving an accreditation signifies the eligibility for selected federal grants and programs, such as the Title VII funding by the U.S Public Health Services. 

“Helping to ensure UAB and UAB School of Medicine maintain the proper accreditation gives me a sense of accomplishment. Working on this was challenging and fun,” said James O. Hill, a software developer for UAB IT. 

Using Faculty Profiles allows users to collect and store data on academic publications, grants, appointments, and other important activities.  

To help with accreditation, UAB IT was tasked with gathering and reporting academic publication counts by department and division. UAB IT and Faculty Profiles also collected “at that moment” data which will be used by accreditors to confirm publication information. After collecting all the data for the Heersink School of Medicine, it has to be formatted before it can be turned in.   

Without the help of UAB IT, staff would have had to manually gather all SOM faculty's profiles and count publications making sure a publication was only counted once per department and division. With nearly 1,700 School of Medicine faculty, this even would have taken up the majority of their time.