Access and Login Information
To edit your faculty/staff bio, go to http://www.pratt.edu/wp-admin and use the “Sign in” button under “Use one-click authentication” at the top of the page. This will take you to your Pratt Onekey sign-in page.
Once you are in the WordPress content management system, you will see near the upper-left your role on this site and links to edit your profile/view your profile.
Watch this brief video to guide you through editing features and processes.
Automated Content
Your name, title, school, department, email address, phone number, and courses all draw from Colleague, Human Resources’ database of employee records.
Note: If you have provided Human Resources with a different preferred name from the official name on file for you in Colleague, you alone will see both names here in the editor, but only your preferred first and last name will appear on your bio.
You will need to contact Human Resources for any corrections.
Your Personalized Content
You can manage all other content not drawn from Colleague in the profile editor.
Professional Biography
A succinct, well-written bio tells your story and gives visitors to the Pratt website insight into who you are—your work, your education, and what motivates you.
We recommend that your online faculty biography be written in third person and, ideally, 200 to 500 words.
More guidance is available in the “Essentials of a Professional Biography” section below.
Education
List your education in reverse chronological order starting with your terminal degree. List the degree, major or program, and then institution. Here is a format and style example:
PhD, Art Education, Teacher’s College, Columbia University
MFA, Photography, Pratt Institute
BFA, Painting, Pennsylvania State University
Publications, Projects, Exhibitions, Engagements
Your list of publications and professional engagements can be as long as you wish. You may also wish to abridge the list displayed on the page and save the unabridged list for the CV file that you upload. This is up to you.
Headshot
Headshots are edited through the “Featured Image” section on the right-hand side of the profile editor dashboard. All profile images should be recent, professional-quality headshots, showing your face clearly, recognizably, and engagingly. Resolution must be at least 72 dpi. Please upload a jpg no greater than 10mb with a minimum width of 1600px.
Your image will be displayed as a square throughout the site and will be automatically cropped if a non-square image is uploaded. Please ensure that your face is in the center of the image to prevent undesired cropping.
Pratt’s Creative Services provides photographers a few times a year for faculty photos with a consistent style and composition. However, you are welcome to use your own preferred professional portrait, so long as it follows the quality, appearance, and resolution stated above. Please do not use images that are not of yourself. Do not use a work of art, graphic image, or an image of another person as a placeholder. Please contact Creative Services at creativeservices@pratt.edu if you have questions or need assistance with your headshot.
Personal Pronouns
You are welcome to include your personal pronouns. Pratt encourages all community members to do so.
Professional Websites
Additionally, you may list your own professional website, portfolio archive, or listing with a professional organization. Social media accounts are not recommended, unless you maintain a completely professional presence in both content and commentary. Password-protected sites, web file directories (e.g., Dropbox, Google Drive), or links directly to PDF or presentation files are not allowed. Be sure to include the full web address, including the “https://www.” at the beginning of the address.
Essentials of a Professional Biography
Voice
Why are professional bios written in third person? It simply makes it easier to use the text for multiple purposes, such as publication and exhibition material, conference and membership listings, and event promotions. In these instances, biographies are typically presented in third person and together with multiple participants. By providing a biography in third person, others can easily grab and use the information as it is presented on the Pratt website.
Audience and Content
Think of your biography as your way of introducing yourself to prospective and current students, as well professional colleagues and prospective supporters. Your biography should include information about your specialty and discipline, your passion for teaching or education administration, how you involve students in your research and scholarship, and how you mentor others in theirs.
When it comes to publications and exhibitions, or highly technical details of your research, it is best to touch on highlights in your biography and focus on the main points that distinguish you as a professional and excite you about your work. You should reserve the unabridged extent of your publications and engagements to the classic CV list that follows your biography.
Introduction
For the introductory paragraph, no matter the length of your career, bios begin with a formula:
NAME, HONORIFIC, TITLE, any ENDOWMENT, CHAIR of a department, or head of a CENTER, ORGANIZATION, or BUSINESS.
Farzam Yazdanseta’s introduction is a good example:
Farzam Yazdanseta, AIA, NCARB, is the Acting Associate Chair for Undergraduate Architecture at Pratt Institute. He is an educator and a licensed architect, registered to practice in New York and Maryland. He is the co-founder of Studio FOU: Studio Farzam Yazdanseta Ursula Trost Architecture DPC based in Brooklyn. Since 2012, he has been a member of the faculty at Pratt Institute School of Architecture.
This tells the reader upfront the basics of your professional experience. If you have a named professorship or position, this should be included here as well. For example, Cristina Fontánez Rodríguez’s named position:
Cristina Fontánez Rodríguez is the Virginia Thoren and Institute Archivist at Pratt Institute Libraries and Visiting Assistant Professor at the Pratt Institute School of Information.
What follows the intro
The rest of your bio can include as many or as few details as you’d like, though a substantive bio should be somewhere between 200 and 500 words.
After the first paragraph, here are some elements the rest of your bio may include:
- Your career arc: past positions, fellowships, appointments, and recognitions
- Your area of focus, expertise, or professional interests
- Narrative about education and details about your accomplishments (the complete list of degrees will follow your bio)
- Your purpose or what you hope to achieve in your current position
This line, from Uzma Rizvi’s profile, is a good example of a statement of purpose:
With nearly two decades of work on decolonizing methodologies, intersectional and feminist strategies, and transdisciplinary approaches, [her] work has intentionally pushed disciplinary limits, and demanded ethical decolonial praxis at all levels of engagement, from teaching to research.
This section in Amanda Huynh’s bio weaves her focused interest into her biographical notes:
Amanda Huynh is a Canadian product and food designer working at the intersections of community-building, social innovation, and sustainable design. Amanda’s design career has allowed her to work across a variety of sectors in Vancouver, Bali, Shanghai, and London, England.