The interest area matching feature attempts to show faculty members the applications in which they will be interested.
Each faculty member has a set of research interest areas which they can edit via the user interface. These are recorded in the table work_faculty_interest. The available interest areas are defined by the table work_faculty_interest_area which should reflect the sub-plans defined for the various Academic Units.
Each application has a set of sub-plans associated with it. These are imported into the system in the table gso_app_subplan and copied to the table work_application_interest. This table can be adjusted by people with the ADC or DIR role.
The faculty screen shows faculty members all applications whose interest areas overlap the faculty member’s interest areas.