UAB Faculty Committee Memberships

This project extracts and visualizes faculty committee memberships and mentoring relationships from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Scholars database. The system processes faculty profiles, research classifications, and committee assignments to create an interactive web-based table for exploring all students currently or formerly mentored by faculty at UAB through graduate committee memberships.

Table of Contents

• Project Background
• Install & Setup
• Usage
• Directory Structure
• Contributing
• License
• Authors

Project Background

The UAB Faculty Committee Memberships project addresses the need for a comprehensive view of faculty involvement in graduate education through committee memberships. While this data exists on individual UAB Scholars pages, this system provides an easy way to view all students currently or formerly mentored by faculty at UAB. By combining data from UAB Scholars profiles and graduate committee records, this system provides insights into:

• Faculty research areas and specializations
• Student mentoring relationships and roles
• Committee participation patterns
• Academic collaboration networks

The project processes structured data from multiple sources to create a searchable, filterable interface that helps researchers, administrators, and students understand the mentoring landscape at UAB through graduate committee memberships.

Install & Setup

• Python 3.8+
• SLURM cluster access (for data collection)
• Web browser (for viewing the generated HTML table)

Instructions

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/[username]/parse-uab-scholars.git
   cd parse-uab-scholars

2. Install Python dependencies:

   pip install requests

Usage

Data Collection (Cluster)

Step 1: Run the unified pipeline on your cluster

sbatch submit_pipeline_jobs.sh

This creates:

• data/uab_scholars_profiles.jsonl - All faculty profiles
• data/faculty_data/ - Individual faculty files with emails, keywords, and committee roles

Step 2: Wait for completion

• 200 parallel jobs process ~25 faculty each
• Each faculty gets one complete data file
• Failed jobs are automatically retried

Data Processing

Step 3: Generate the combined dataset

python create_faculty_student_data.py

This creates data/processed/faculty_students.json containing:

• Faculty names and research areas
• Student mentoring relationships
• Committee role and status information
• Hidden search keywords from publications/grants

Web Interface

Step 4: Update the GitHub Pages website

python update_docs.py

This script:

1. Regenerates faculty-student data
2. Copies assets to the docs/ folder
3. Prepares files for GitHub Pages deployment

GitHub Pages Deployment

Step 5: Deploy to GitHub Pages

1. Push changes to GitHub
2. Enable GitHub Pages in repository settings
3. Set source to "Deploy from a branch" → "main" → "/docs"
4. Access the table at https://[username].github.io/[repo-name]/

Features

• Search: Faculty names, research areas, student names
• Filter by Research Area: Dropdown with autocomplete suggestions
• Faculty Profile Links: Direct links to UAB Scholars profiles
• Committee Memberships: View all students mentored through graduate committees
• Responsive Design: Mobile-friendly interface
• Real-time Statistics: Dynamic updates during filtering
• Hidden Keywords: Publication and grant keywords for enhanced search

Directory Structure

$ tree -a parse-uab-scholars/
parse-uab-scholars/
├── README.md                       <- This file
├── LICENSE                         <- License for the repo
├── CONTRIBUTING.md                 <- Contribution guidelines
├── fetch_uab_data_pipeline.py      <- Unified data collection pipeline
├── submit_pipeline_jobs.sh         <- SLURM job submission script
├── create_faculty_student_data.py  <- Data processing for HTML table
├── create_html_table.py            <- HTML table generation
├── update_docs.py                  <- Documentation updates
├── archive/                        <- Old/unused scripts
├── data
│   ├── uab_scholars_profiles.jsonl <- Faculty profiles (Stage 1 output)
│   ├── faculty_data/               <- Individual faculty files (Stage 2-3 output)
│   │   ├── 1922.json              <- Inmaculada Aban's complete data
│   │   ├── 3738.json              <- Mohamad Abbas's complete data
│   │   └── ...                    <- One file per faculty
│   └── processed/
│       └── faculty_students.json   <- Combined data for HTML table
├── docs                            <- GitHub Pages site
│   ├── index.html                  <- Main web interface
│   ├── faculty_students.json       <- Data for web interface
│   └── assets/                     <- CSS and JavaScript files
└── logs                            <- Pipeline execution logs

Contributing

We welcome contributions! See the docs for guidelines.

Development Workflow

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch
3. Make your changes
4. Test with sample data
5. Submit a pull request

Code Style

• Follow PEP 8 for Python code
• Use descriptive variable names
• Include docstrings for functions
• Add comments explaining complex logic

License

View the LICENSE for this project.

Authors

• Shaurita Hutchins email | Graduate Research Assistant | sdhutchins