Nov. 4, 2022 — From wandering around the labyrinth of a new university campus to searching through webpages to find current policies regarding vacation leave, it can often be a time-intensive process to locate the most up-to-date faculty information.

For this reason, the UF College of Medicine recently launched the Orange and Blue Faculty Handbooks, two web-based, comprehensive collections of policies, procedures and information to provide faculty with an authoritative repository of college resources.

As a key initiative from the people pillar of the College of Medicine strategic plan, the Orange and Blue Handbooks were spearheaded by Dr. Segal and his team in response to feedback from college faculty. The handbooks assemble previously dispersed materials into all-inclusive, easily accessible guides equipping faculty to plan their professional development and enhancing the onboarding of new talent.

“We wanted an authoritative resource faculty could go to without having to ask around or sift through multiple websites,” said Mark Segal, M.D., Ph.D., senior associate dean for faculty affairs and professional development at the College of Medicine. “There is so much information out there, and a lot of time with Google you find old pages with old information that may not be up to date or accurate. Our hope is that our faculty will find these handbooks to be easily accessible and valuable resources for their professional growth and career development.” 

The Blue handbook is tailored specifically for faculty members on the tenure track, while the Orange handbook is catered to faculty on the multi-mission and single-mission tracks. Included within the handbooks are resources ranging from activity reports and information about vacation days to facility maps and wellness resources.

Alongside Segal, a key driving force for the creation of the handbooks was Chloe Schlitt, a Master of Health Administration candidate at UF, who served last summer as an intern in the Dean’s Office. Schlitt was instrumental in collecting and compiling all the resources together into one place, and she hopes the handbooks will allow faculty to better take charge of their careers.

“These books will provide faculty with more of an understanding of how the organization works, what your benefits are and what your career trajectory might look like within your current role,” said Schlitt. “I think the biggest benefit from this will be familiarity with the resources available to you, an understanding of how to guide your professional growth and where you can look for to do that.”

The Orange and Blue Faculty Handbooks were designed to be living and breathing documents, updated yearly to reflect changes in policies and additional resources that become available. Segal says he looks forward to adding more to the handbooks and that he welcomes suggestions from faculty on what would be useful to include in future iterations.

“The hardest part was stopping,” said Segal. What we want is to put more things in it every year. We want ideas from people on what else would be good to include in the books, just to make it bigger and better, more inclusive and useful for everyone.”