About Your Faculty Center


Introduction

Instructors, the Faculty Center provides you with a single, personalized point of access to your teaching schedule, including any class and grade rosters. You can view your teaching information for the current term or look at information for other terms (if applicable). You can download a copy of your class or final exam schedule to your preferred calendaring tool. You can get a summary of FERPA information including some dos and don'ts. Also, you can access your class overview or link to syllabus if you have entered them.

Select a Term

Your Faculty Center defaults to show current term information, unless you saved User Preferences that dictate otherwise. Learn more about User Preferences.

If you have had teaching assignments for more than one term, and want to view information for another term, click the change term button. On the Select Term page, select a term, then click Continue. Your Faculty Center will refresh to show your teaching assignments for the new term.

View Textbook Summary

Use the View Textbook Summary link to see books or other course materials you assigned for classes for which you are a Primary Instructor. If you have questions about whether you are a Primary Instructor for a class, contact the Scheduling Representative for the department through which the class is offered.

  • To view your textbooks and other materials summary in SPIRE, click the View Textbook Summary link on your Faculty Center.
  • To view information about textbooks or other materials for other instructors' classes, see Use the Class Detail Page in Search for Classes.
  • To enter or update textbooks or other materials information for classes for which you are a Primary Instructor, see Class Overview/Textbooks - for Instructors & Staff.

 

On the Faculty Center Textbook Summary page:

  • The term information is at the top of the page.
  • By default, the page opens to list all your classes for the selected term, along with any book or other materials information. If there is no textbook/other materials information available for a class, a message, Textbooks to be determined, displays.
  • Directly below the term information, if you click Collapse All, you will see just the heading information for each of your classes. Click any green arrow to the the left of a class heading to expand that section. Click Expand All to see textbook/other materials information for all of your classes.
  • For classes with textbooks/other materials assigned, any Special Instructions you included display.

  • Textbook information includes the status (recommended or required), ISBN, title, and publisher, along with a link to view details at the Amazon website.

  • Click Return to Faculty Center to go back to your Faculty Center SPIRE home page.
  • Go to Faculty Home > Class Overview/Textbooks to go to the page that allows you to add or update a course overview or link to syllabus.  This page also has a link to the eCampus FAST Adoption Tool.
  • Click Printer Friendly Page to open a formatted for printing version of the Faculty Center Textbook Summary page. See our documentation Printing from SPIRE for more information. When finished printing, click Return to Textbook Summary.

Learn More about FERPA

FERPA (the Family Educational Rights & Privacy Act) is a federal law protecting the confidentiality of student records. Click View FERPA Quick Reference to learn more about confidential student information and how to handle this information securely.

You can access the UMass FERPA tutorial (in the Files box on the About Ferpa Certification page), the Instructor's Guide & Certificate for Information Security, and the most current Academic Regulations from the FERPA Quick Reference page. These resources all provide more information about how the FERPA law is interpreted and applied at UMass Amherst.

Click Return to go back to your Faculty Center.

Work with Your Teaching Schedule

The My Teaching Schedule table displays all your UMass Amherst teaching assignments for a single term. If you have teaching assignments for other terms and want to view one of those terms, click the change term button. On the Select Term page, select a term, then click Continue. Your Faculty Center will refresh to show your teaching assignments for the new term.

Your teaching assignments for a term appear in the My Teaching Schedule table.

  • Multi-component classes: Only class components assigned to you to teach appear in your My Teaching Schedule table.
  • Independent studies: Some independent studies appear in the My Teaching Schedule table; others appear only in your Independent Study List. To see your Independent Study List, from the SPIRE Menu, go to Faculty Home > Independent Study List.
  • Questions about your Teaching Schedule: If you do not see a class in your teaching schedule that you expect or you see classes that you do not teach, first check that you are looking at the correct term. Then if the list of classes is incomplete or incorrect, contact the Scheduling Representative for the department offering the class. Work with the Scheduling Representative to correct or update your teaching assignments as needed.

Export a Copy of Your Teaching Schedule

To export a copy of your teaching schedule:

  • Option 1, export a copy of your teaching schedule as an Excel file. Click the download icon (Download) to the right of the heading My Teaching Schedule in the blue bar. For the download to work, your browser security settings must allow file downloads for SPIRE. Check with your department's UMass Amherst IT contact or use your browser Help feature to find out how to adjust browser security settings to allow downloads for specific websites.
  • Option 2, export a copy of your teaching schedule as a calendar file. From the SPIRE Menu, go to Faculty Home > Download Class Schedule, to export a copy of your schedule for use with a calendar program such as Outlook or ICal, etc. Learn more about Download Your Class and Final Exam Schedules.

Select Display Option for Your Teaching Schedule

You can adjust your teaching schedule to show only classes with enrollment or all your teaching assignments for term.

  • Select Show All Classes for the My Teaching Schedule table to display all your teaching assignments for a term, regardless of how many students enrolled in each class.
  • Select Show Enrolled Classes Only to exclude classes with no students enrolled from the My Teaching Schedule table.

Class Rosters

Click the Class Roster icon (Class Roster) to view the most recent class roster for a class. Learn more about class rosters.

Grade Rosters

To access the grade roster for a class, click the Grade Roster icon next to the class description. The Grade Roster icon changes to reflect the current status of the grade roster.

  • The Grade Roster icon (Grade Roster) indicates the roster is ready for grade entry or for reviewing or editing the entered grades.
  • The Approved Grade Roster icon (Roster Approved) indicates that grades were entered, the roster was approved and is ready to be processed, but the grades are not yet posted.
  • The Posted Grade Roster icon (Posted Roster) indicates the Registrar's Office, University Without Walls, or the Graduate School processed the roster and posted the grades to students' records.

Learn more about using grade rosters.

Note: Grade rosters become available in the latter part of the term (about three weeks before grades are due for the Fall and Spring terms).

Learning Management System

If you are using Moodle or Blackboard Learn for your classes, the learning management system (LMS) icon (LMS) will appear next to the roster columns. Click the LMS icon (LMS) to access the Moodle or Blackboard Learn Login page. If you do not use a Learning Management System and would like more information, see Course Eligibility for Requesting a Learning Management System (LMS).  

Class Column

Use the Class column to check the basic identifiers for your class, as they appear in the Schedule of Classes:

  • Subject Area (e.g., COMM for Communication, etc.). Subject Area Codes & Definitions (PDF, 103k)
  • Catalog & Section Number (e.g., COMM 396T -07).
  • Class Component: Your class can have one or multiple components (e.g., a lecture or a lecture and a discussion section). Components include the following categories: LEC (Lecture), DIS (Discussion), LAB (Lab), SEM (Seminar), STS (Studio/Skills), IND (Individualized Study), PRA (Practicum), DST (Thesis/Dissertation).
  • Class Number: The 5-digit unique identifier for a class that students use to register. Class Numbers change from one semester to the next, even for the same class.

For each class listed in the My Teaching Schedule table, the Class column provides a link to the corresponding Class Detail page in the Schedule of Classes. Click any Class Detail link to see more information about a class, including its enrollment status (Open/Closed), enrollment restrictions (e.g., reserved seating, requisites, etc.), notes, class capacity and current enrollment, waitlist information (if the class uses a SPIRE waitlist), and GenEd information (e.g., whether your class fulfills any General Education requirements).

On the Class Detail page, click Close to return to the Faculty Center.

Class Title Column

The Class Title column provides the full name of each class (e.g., S - Conflict/Mediation (Seminar), etc.)

Enrolled Column

The Enrolled column shows the number of students currently enrolled in a class. During the open enrollment period, this number changes whenever students add or drop the class.

Days & Time Column

The Days & Time column lists the meeting times for each class (e.g., MoWeFr 9:05 - 9:50).

TBA indicates one of the following:

  • The meeting time for your class has not been posted in SPIRE yet. Check with the academic support staff in your department for more information.
  • The class is offered on-line.
  • The meeting time is flexible (e.g., for independent studies).

Room Column

The Room column lists the building and room number where a class meets.

TBA indicates that the location for your class has not been posted in SPIRE yet. Check with the academic support staff in your department for more information.

Class Dates Column

The Class Dates column lists the start and end dates for each class (usually corresponding to the start and end dates of the semester). If you are teaching a course with non-standard dates (e.g., a six-week course in the Fall or Spring semester), use this column to confirm the start and end dates display correctly.

View Weekly Teaching Schedule

Click the View Weekly Teaching Schedule link to open a weekly calendar format view of your teaching schedule.

Note: The weekly teaching schedule does not include classes that do not have valid days and times listed in the Schedule of Classes (e.g., independent studies, online classes, etc.); Academic Calendar schedule changes (e.g., classes following a Monday schedule on the Tuesday after a holiday); or final exam information.