About Scholarly | Faculty Affairs Software

Summary

Scholarly Software, Inc. is dedicated to transforming faculty administration by providing software purpose-built for faculty and faculty affairs administrators. Founded by Rusty Cowher and Kelly Sutton, Scholarly was established in response to direct feedback from faculty, deans, and administrators, aiming to reduce administrative burdens and empower institutions with actionable data. The company is backed by leading software investors and maintains a strong advisory network, inviting faculty affairs administrators to contribute to ongoing development. Scholarly emphasizes its commitment to the mission of higher education and actively seeks input from its user base to ensure its solutions remain relevant and effective.

What is Scholarly Software?
- Scholarly Software is a platform designed to streamline faculty administration, helping faculty and administrators save time on administrative tasks while providing institutions with valuable data (source).
Who founded Scholarly Software?
- Scholarly was founded by Rusty Cowher and Kelly Sutton, both deeply committed to supporting higher education through technology (about).
How does Scholarly ensure its product meets faculty needs?
- Faculty input has guided Scholarly at every stage, with the company actively seeking feedback from faculty members, deans, and administrators to shape its offerings.
Who backs Scholarly Software?
- The company is supported by leading software investors, reinforcing its credibility and commitment to innovation in higher education administration.
How can faculty affairs administrators get involved?
- Scholarly invites administrators to join its Advisory Network, offering opportunities to influence the platform’s direction and ensure it addresses real-world challenges.

Noteworthy:

Scholarly is actively hiring, with open roles such as Software Engineer based in Seattle (careers).
“Faculty have long been underserved by modern software, and we intend to change that.” — Scholarly Software

Interested in learning more or shaping the future of faculty administration? Visit scholarlysoftware.com or book a demo today.

A faculty affairs platform, finally built for the people who run faculty affairs

Scholarly is a modern faculty information system that centralizes faculty data and streamlines the manual work that buries administrators and faculty, so your team spends less time wrangling documents and spreadsheets and more time supporting faculty.

Our mission

Faculty are unique and have been underserved by software for decades

Faculty aren't standard employees, and faculty affairs isn't standard HR. Faculty data is a web of appointments and a career's worth of activities like courses, publications, grants, creative work, service and more. Faculty may have multiple appointments and roles, not a single job record. Careers move along academic timelines of tenure clocks, reappointment reviews, and promotion milestones that unfold over years. And faculty affairs processes have no true parallel in business, where a promotion or tenure decision can span many steps, multiple committee reviews, external review letters, and require a variety of documents. Typical HR software was never built for any of this, which is why the work has stayed so manual, and so painful, for so long.

Faculty data often lives in a dozen disconnected places: CVs, spreadsheets, legacy systems, email threads, and PDFs. Every promotion case, annual evaluation, and accreditation report means rebuilding the same information by hand. Administrators lose weeks to busywork, faculty lose patience, and institutions lose the clear, reliable data they need to make decisions.

Scholarly was built to solve these problems. We are a modern faculty information system that brings faculty data into one trustworthy source, automates complex processes, and uses AI to eliminate the most tedious work, like turning a faculty member's CV into structured profile data in minutes instead of days.

Scholarly gives faculty and the administrators who support them a platform worthy of the work they do, while providing institutions with the data and infrastructure to operate effectively. We believe deeply in the mission of higher education, and we build for it every day.

The team

Meet the team behind Scholarly

Rusty Cowher: Co-Founder & CEO

Rusty is the co-founder and CEO of Scholarly, where he leads the company's mission to build a modern platform purpose-built for faculty affairs. Before Scholarly, Rusty led the analytics, insights, and AI function at Vail Resorts, heading up a department of over 60 individuals. He also led enterprise software implementations at Fortune 500 companies as a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group. Rusty has close family ties to higher ed administration, which is what initially sparked his interest in faculty affairs. He holds a JD from Stanford Law School and a BA in History and Leadership Studies from Williams College.

Kelly Sutton: Co-Founder & CTO

Kelly is the co-founder and CTO of Scholarly, where he leads product and engineering. A longtime software builder based in Seattle, Kelly previously founded Designer News, HackCollege, and LayerVault. He was an engineering leader at Gusto. Kelly earned his BS in Computer Science and BA in Film Production from Loyola Marymount University. Kelly believes faculty deserve better software, which led him to co-found Scholarly. Outside of work, Kelly can be found spending time with his family.

Kari Schaller: COO

Kari is Scholarly's Chief Operating Officer, overseeing customer implementations and operations. Prior to Scholarly, Kari led strategy and analytics efforts at Vail Resorts and for Fortune 500 companies as a consultant for Oliver Wyman. She was drawn to Scholarly by the company's higher education mission, her belief in the founders' leadership, and the opportunity to help build in a fast-growing SaaS space. Kari holds a B.S. in Commerce from the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia. Outside of work, Kari loves getting into the Colorado mountains to hike and ski, and is a passionate cook and foodie.

Built for the standards higher ed requires

Institutions trust Scholarly with sensitive faculty data, and we take that seriously.

Our Investors

Scholarly is backed by leading software investors

See what a modern faculty platform can accomplish

Whether you're modernizing promotion and tenure, simplifying annual reviews, or finally getting your faculty data in one place, we'd love to show you what Scholarly can do.