The next round of CALS Faculty Activity Reports (FARs) will once again be compiled via the Faculty Success reporting tool. Reports will be due to your department chairs on Thursday, January 21, 2027 (reporting on activities from January 1, 2026 – December 31, 2026).

Faculty Success changed the look of the system on November 2. How-to materials have been updated and you can read more about the change on the Watermark website and in this Watermark video.

Although not yet live, Watermark has announced that it will be introducing AI tools that may help you be more efficient with your reporting. Watch for the availability of, and information on best practices, on the CALS Faculty Success webpage.

As we did after the first year of use, we collected feedback after our second year of using Faculty Success. We incorporated feedback from the 2025 FAR experience and made adjustments to the CALS Faculty Success tool for the next reporting cycle. We also made a couple of adjustments related to teaching activity:

• We added a screen for recording Act 15 Equivalencies. This screen should only be used by people who do not meet the Act 15 teaching requirement. If you taught less than 12 credits (if you have a nine-month appointment) or 15 credits (if you have a 12-month appointment) in an academic year, please enter your equivalencies in this section. For information about qualifying activities, visit go.wisc.edu/calsact15.
• We will now require that you upload a PDF of teaching evaluations for each group instruction course from Blue, UW–Madison’s digital course evaluation system. If your course did not meet the minimum enrollment criteria for Blue to allow you to access evaluations, you must put a comment in the description field explaining why there isn’t a PDF.
  • Courses for which you are an instructor of record are added for you by CALS Administration. All 2026 teaching data will be added by mid-December, and spring 2027 data will be added by the end of April.
  • To add your teaching evaluation, click the Scheduled Teaching Screen, select a course, and find the field where you can upload a PDF.

As a reminder, faculty profiles are populated from information in Faculty Success. Keep in mind that the bio you write in Faculty Success will be public so you may choose to use this to summarize your main areas of focus and impact. 

Faculty members can find useful information such as the link to login to Faculty Success, how-to documents, demonstration videos, and FAQs on the CALS Faculty Success webpage. 

If you have any questions, email facultysuccess@cals.wisc.edu.