What is a PAR?

The PAR is the Prior Approval Request process required for the hiring of faculty. Before a formal offer of employment is made to any faculty candidate, the hiring unit must be formally granted permission to make that offer. The process of vetting faculty candidates by all required parties is the PAR system. The PAR defines the specific items that are needed for the recruitment and hiring of all types of faculty and how the candidates should be evaluated.

Since faculty are not hired directly in Workday as other employee types are, the PAR also serves as the system to collect data about the hire, which is then pushed to Workday by the Provost’s Office once the PAR has been approved.

PAR process overview

When do I need to submit a PAR?

 PARs must be processed for hires of new faculty, and former faculty whose employment has been terminated. Faculty are not hired via Workday. Once the PAR is final-approved, EVPP loads the appointment into Workday via the PAR. 

A PAR is needed in the following situations:

• New faculty member who has never taught at UT Austin.

• Rehire of former faculty member whose position was terminated.

• Faculty member whose position has been inactive for longer than three years.

• Current UT Austin faculty or staff member, who will be instructor of record or hold another faculty role in a new, different unit.

If creating a new PAR for a faculty member with a previous PAR on file:

• Once the Primary Language Form is on file, another is not needed. Indicate "On File" in PAR section 7, "Supporting Documentation".

• APS may waive reference letters on a case-by-case basis, especially if the previous PAR was created within the past 18 months. Contact APS directly to request this, and include the faculty member's name, EID, and document ID and date of the most recent PAR.

A PAR is not required in these situations:

• Courtesy and Academic Affiliate positions (note that these are different from 0% FTE faculty positions). See COE: Academic Appointments.

• Retired faculty member returning to teach. See COE: Hiring Retired Faculty for other options.

PAR document types in *DEFINE

How do I create a PDF of a DEFINE screen or voucher cover sheet?

See ServiceNow: Printing DEFINE Screen or Voucher Cover Sheet from Off-Campus.

“Green Output” offers a way to save Mainframe documents as electronic ones - see more on Green Output below.

Green Output

What is Green Output?

Green Output offers a way to "print" Mainframe reports and screens to .txt, .pdf, .xls, or .csv files instead of printing on paper via TID printer. Reports can be sent to a directory on Austin Disk, a secure online storage and sharing service available to all current UT Austin staff, students, and faculty.

PAR coversheets from *DEFINE FPM commands can be printed to PDF via Green Output for inclusion in PAR packets.

How do I know if I already have Green Output set up?

Use *DPUSER to verify that your access to the service is not already "Active."

• Log on to the Mainframe

• Once you reach your default COM-PLETE screen, you will see your Mainframe USER ID listed at the top of the page just to the right of the word USER

• Open DPUSER

• Input UP in the Command line and your USER ID in the USER ID/Dept field and press Enter to access your profile

• View the "Default all output to Green Output" field. If you see a "W", you already have access, if not click the Request button

How do I set up Green Output?

For most staff, a Green Output account is created automatically. Set-up is finalized after submission of the first print request on an account. Typically, after first print request submission, the requester will receive an automated email the next business day notifying them that their document is available for download. Subsequent documents can be expected in a much shorter turnaround time, sometimes within minutes after print request submission.

Completed document requests can be downloaded from webdav.austin.utexas.edu - /eReports/[insert EID]/

How do I print to Green Output and/or retrieve my document file?

To print PAR cover sheets from DEFINE:

1. In the DEFINE document to be printed (e.g. FPN, FPT, FPR), enter “PRT” in the “Action” field in the top left-hand corner.

2. The following dialogue box will pop-up - complete following red text below as an example:

3. Go to webdav.austin.utexas.edu - /eReports/[insert EID]/, sign in with your EID and EID password.

4. Find your document in the list and save to PDF. Tip: If many documents are listed, find the relevant report quickly by using keyboard shortcut “Ctrl+F” (PC) or “⌘+F” (Mac) and the date of the report (e.g. 6/1/2025).                                    

See ServiceNow: Setting Up and Managing Green Output for additional information.

How to look up prior PAR doc IDs for a current or former faculty member

Search for all UT PAR records by EID for a single Academic Year:

• Enter their EID in Workday

• If they have an existing employee profile in Workday, locate their Hire Date and Original Hire Date in Worker Profile > Job Details

• Go to FP1 in DEFINE. Enter their EID.

• Change the year to the AY of their Hire Date (and of their Original Hire Date, if different from Hire Date).

• Also enter the AYs for the year previous to Hire Date and Original Hire Date in order to bring up results of any summer PARs they may have had.

• Note the results, if any.

• Contact COE-FacultyAffairs@austin.utexas.edu with any questions.

Search all PAR records processed by a single COE academic department

Administrative Managers in COE academic departments may access a spreadsheet of all PARs processed in their department between September 1, 1998, and September 30, 2025, downloaded from “PAR Listing by Department” in UT Direct, which was retired effective October 1, 2025. The spreadsheet lives in the department’s Faculty Personnel File folder created by COE Faculty Affairs and is searchable by faculty name, EID, appointment dates, and more.