2020 Annual Report
2020 Year in Review
The Collaborative on Academic Careers
in Higher Education

Reflections on the Year
“Don’t forget what you came here for.”
This is the advice one longtime provost and COACHE partner offers other chief academic officers who are in a tough spot.
Facing a new crisis everyday – and a pandemic all year, and racial injustice over a lifetime – a leader, indeed any citizen of the academy can lose their way, perhaps their hope.
Like everyone in 2020, we at COACHE were challenged to stay the course and at the same time to reexamine our past. What did COACHE come here for?
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Our founders’ sentiment that faculty diversity has been “too little for too long” is as frustratingly relevant today as it was 20 years ago. Whiteness still reigns a generation later, soothed by the “tranquilizing drug of gradualism” that is higher education’s hallmark. We have certainly made progress, but race is the inexorable force of American history; its gravity is inescapable. Last year, we recognized that however well-meaning, COACHE has often been complicit in sharing the deficit narrative that leads to faculty policies and programs designed to “fix” minoritized faculty, not the broken structures that exclude so many of them. We implored our partners and prospective partners to enlist COACHE data and engage white faculty in becoming aware of and exercising their privilege to reform recruitment, workloads, rewards, recognitions, and departures.
In our 2019 Year in Review, we promised to sharpen our faculty welfare and equity work. “We are more emboldened than ever,” we wrote, “to spotlight uncomfortable insights about the ways in which our colleges and universities preserve the status quo.” Despite a year of calamities—some felt very personally—our team delivered on this promise across all four domains of COACHE’s research practice partnership.
This Year in Review captures how COACHE is reclaiming what we came here for. But are we satisfied? Of course not. As we listen to, learn from, and lift up our most marginalized partners, scholars, and allies, we will lean on higher education’s interests to expose and eliminate inequities, to interrogate parochial definitions of excellence, and to advance a more just and inclusive academy. We are unwilling to postpone these goals, and we choose to do these things together “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

Kiernan Mathews, Ed.D
Former Executive Director & Principal Investigator
Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey

36,700
faculty across 39 institutions

52%
response rate

25 minutes
average time to complete the survey
In COACHE’s 2019 Year in Review, we laid out our intention to focus the next year’s analysis on equity in the academy. Little did we know that the events of 2020 would make the subject more urgent than ever.
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The quantitative and qualitative data from our Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey demonstrate that faculty can share disciplines, departments, and institutions—yet have divergent, and often inequitable, experiences depending on their identities.
As institutions face waves of change in the wake of COVID-19, the work of the academy will be in making sure that those changes do not further disadvantage faculty members from underrepresented groups.
Our data can be a useful tool in helping institutions take thoughtful action to reduce harm to these faculty members.
In 2020, our analysis around equity focused on three main areas:

The Illusion of Inclusion
Survey results illuminate and demonstrate disparities in perceptions around workplace diversity and inclusion efforts and progress.
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Our analysis shows that white faculty are much more likely to agree (73 percent) than Black faculty (55 percent) that there is visible leadership for the support and promotion of diversity on their campus. By an even wider margin, more white faculty (78 percent) than Black faculty (58 precent) agree that their department colleagues are committed to supporting and promoting diversity and inclusion in the department.

Faculty with Disabilities
Over the past two years, the survey has incorporated questions about disability status and disclosure.
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The answers of those diagnosed with a disability exposed a divide between the attitudes and experiences of those who disclosed their disability status and those who did not.
One in ten faculty members with a visible disability reported that they had not disclosed their disability to anyone on campus. Meanwhile, one in three faculty members with invisible disabilities said the same. These two groups also had differing responses to questions about workload, work/life balance, and departmental fit.

Childcare for Faculty
52.6% of survey respondents are parents. These faculty have faced particular challenges during the pandemic as they’ve navigated childcare alongside their professional responsibilities.
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We found a patchwork of responses among institution and individual faculty, from summer “Zoomcare” for faculty members’ children at the University of Chicago to a suggestion that faculty note opportunities declined due to COVID on their CVs. We will be keeping an eye on responses to questions about institutional support for balancing work and family responsibilities in the 2021 Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey.
Technical Report
Examining the Impacts of COVID-19 on Survey Data
During 2020’s survey administration period, many of our partners made the difficult decision to transition to online instruction, leaving their faculty scrambling to re-work their pedagogy and adapt to new technologies. This naturally raised questions about the impacts of COVID-19 on the year’s survey data. To address these concerns, COACHE commissioned a study to analyze the impact of the pandemic on each of the survey benchmarks.
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The study divided faculty into three groups: those who participated in the survey occurred before March 9, 2020 (pre-transition), those who did not participate until after March 23 (post-transition), and those “in-transition” faculty who participated between March 9 and March 23.
The analysis found that differences in pre-transition and overall benchmark scores for the 2020 cohort ranged from 0.024 to 0.065. The findings showed that any differences in the scores due to disruptions from the pandemic are not significant enough to be taken into account in strategic planning.
Expanding Reporting for Deans
In 2020, we launched Deans’ Comparative Reports, a set of data tables for Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey partners that provides school or college leadership insight into their own faculty compared to other faculty within their institution and at similar institutions.
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Partners can choose among three tiers of reporting. The first tier compares faculty at one school to faculty at the other schools within the partner institution. The second tier builds on that, comparing that institution to the full cohort of similar schools, and the third tier compares the partner school to the faculty of five other institutions of their choice. Institutions can choose to receive reports for any or all of their schools and can select a different tier of reporting for each school.
Read more about the reporting updates
Faculty Retention & Exit Survey
Our Faculty Retention and Exit Survey asks departing, non-retiring faculty about how they are treated by their institutions during the exit process.
Fully 19% of survey respondents, who are leaving voluntarily, reported being treated somewhat or much worse after their decision to accept the outside offer.
Overall, faculty departures are more likely to be treated worse by their department chairs than by anyone else (dean, colleagues, or administrative staff) once their departure intentions are known.
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When faculty departures are involuntary, the situation requires particular thoughtfulness. We mined our Faculty Retention and Exit Survey data for best practices on conducting faculty departures with an ethic of care.
Our recommendations, published in Inside Higher Ed, argue that administrators must make the departure process clear, must humanize the transition, and must put community before bureaucracy.
Exit and Retention Survey Results
(Compared to how you were treated beforehand)
How were you treated by colleagues in your department after your decision to accept the external offer?
(Compared to how you were treated beforehand)
The selective sharing of COACHE survey data with scholars of higher education is critical to our impact as a research practice partnership.
In 2020, these research partners saw their COACHE analyses appear in several new, peer-reviewed publications.

Faculty Perceptions of Work-Life Balance: The Role of Marital/Relationship and Family Status
Higher Education
Nida Denson, Western Sydney University
Katalin Szelényi, University of Massachusetts, Boston
This study uses Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey data to look at the experiences of single faculty members. The researchers found that single faculty members report lower levels of work-life balance than married or partnered faculty. These findings call for colleges and universities to directly address the work-life struggles of single faculty members with and without children. The findings also underscore the importance of institutional support for making personal/family obligations and an academic career compatible for all faculty.

Women Faculty in STEM Disciplines: Experiences with the Tenure Process and Departmental Practices
Humanity & Society
Rodica Lisnic, University of Arkansas
Anna Zajicek, University of Arkansas
Brinck Kerr, University of Arkansas
Using Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey data, this study explores predictors of perceptions of tenure clarity for faculty in STEM and non-STEM fields. The study examines whether assessment of fairness in tenure decisions and evaluations, messages about tenure requirements, mentoring, and relationships with peers have a similar effect on assessment of tenure clarity across four groups (women and men in STEM and women and men in non-STEM).
The results indicate that women in STEM fields are less likely to perceive the expectations for tenure as clear or to assess tenure decisions and evaluations as fair, mentoring as effective, and relationships with peers as satisfactory.
Press & Media
Each year COACHE reflects on the best approaches to serving our partner institutions and their faculty. More than any year before, we have a great deal to consider.
After nearly two decades as a founding member, Kiernan Mathews has moved on to another opportunity. This presents us with an opportunity to reimagine our work. As we do that, you can expect two things. First, our team will be working diligently to improve processes so we can scale the high-quality research and support that you’ve come to expect. More importantly, we plan to spend more time listening to our partner institutions and our research community about the opportunities that lie ahead. As we look to the future, we look forward to continuing to work in tandem with practitioners, researchers, and partners to address the pressing issues facing the faculty.
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Kiernan Mathews
Executive Director and Principal Investigator, Emeritus -
R. Todd Benson
Executive Director and Principal Investigator -
Nduka Obinna (“Obie”) Azubuike
Application Developer -
Amal Kumar
Doctoral Fellow -
Giang Pham
Financial and Operations Associate -
Lauren Scungio
Assistant Director of Marketing and Engagement
2020 Student Support Staff
-
Dominic Amaral
B.S. Candidate, Wentworth Institute of Technology -
Dominique Foster
Ph.D. Candidate, North Carolina State University -
Chris Harrop
Ed.M. Candidate, Harvard Graduate School of Education -
Sara Polsky
Ed.M. Candidate, Harvard Graduate School of Education -
Mai Hu Vang
Ph.D. Candidate, University of Massachusetts Boston
COACHE Leadership
National Advisory Council
-
Susan Carlson
Vice Provost for Academic Personnel and Programs
University of California Office of The President -
Debasish Dutta
Chancellor
University of Michigan-Flint -
Patrick Farrell
Former Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs
Lehigh University -
Tracey Hucks
Provost and Dean of the Faculty
Colgate University -
Joseph Klesner
Senior Adviser to the President for Strategic Planning
Kenyon College -
Maurie McInnis
President
Stony Brook University -
Maria Pallavicini
Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs
University of the Pacific -
Vita Rabinowitz
Former Provost & Vice President for Academic Affairs
Hunter College
Faculty Steering Committee
-
Monica Higgins
Chair
Kathleen McCartney Professor of Education Leadership
Harvard Graduate School of Education -
Richard Light
Carl H. Pforzheimer, Jr. Professor of Teaching and Learning
Harvard Graduate School of Education -
Judith McLaughlin
Senior Lecturer on Education
Educational Chair, Harvard Seminar for New Presidents
Harvard Graduate School of Education -
Joseph Zolner
Adjunct Lecturer on Education
Harvard Graduate School of Education -
Keith Collar
(Ex Officio)
Associate Dean for Strategic Partnerships
Harvard Graduate School of Education -
Kiernan Mathews
(Ex Officio)
Executive Director and Principal Investigator, COACHE
Educational Chair, Seminar on Leadership of the Faculty
National Advisory Council Emeriti
-
Beverly Davenport
Former Chancellor
University of Tennessee at Knoxville -
Gertrude Fraser
Former Vice Provost for Faculty Recruitment and Retention
Associate Professor of Anthropology
University of Virginia -
Junius Gonzales
Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs
New York Institute of Technology -
Robert Groves
Executive Vice President and Provost
Georgetown University -
Jeremy Haefner
Chancellor
University of Denver -
Mark McNamee
Senior Vice President and Provost Emeritus
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University -
Suzanne Ortega
President
Council of Graduate Schools -
Muriel Poston
Former Dean of the Faculty and Vice President for Academic Affairs
Professor of Environmental Analysis
Pitzer College -
Andrew Shennan
Provost and Dean of the College
Wellesley College
Research
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Auburn University
2019; 2016; 2013; 2010; 2008; 2005 -
Baylor University
2019 -
Bowling Green State University
2018; 2014; 2012 -
Central Michigan University
2020 -
CUNY Graduate School and University Center
2018; 2014 -
Florida International University
2019; 2016; 2013; 2010 -
Florida State University
2020; 2017; 2013 -
George Mason University
2018 -
Georgetown University
2019; 2017; 2015; 2013 -
Georgia State University
2019; 2010 -
Indiana University
2018; 2015; 2012; 2009; 2005 -
Iowa State University
2020; 2016; 2013; 2009; 2005 -
Louisiana State University
2020 -
Missouri University of Science & Technology
2019; 2015; 2008 -
North Carolina State University
2020; 2017; 2014; 2011; 2008; 2005 -
Old Dominion University
2018; 2015; 2012; 2009 -
Rochester Institute of Technology
2018; 2015; 2012 -
Rutgers University
2018 -
Texas Tech University
2018; 2016; 2005 -
University of California–Davis
2020; 2016; 2012 -
University of Central Florida
20; 2017; 2014 -
University of Connecticut
2019; 2014; 2010; 2006 -
University of Denver
2018 -
University of Louisville
2019 -
University of Maryland
2019 -
University of Massachusetts–Amherst
2019 -
University of Missouri–Columbia
2018; 2015; 2012; 2008 -
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
2020; 2017; 2014; 2011; 2008; 2005 -
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
2020; 2017; 2014; 2011; 2008; 2005 -
University of North Texas
2020; 2017; 2010; 2008 -
University of Pittsburgh
2018; 2015 -
University of South Carolina
2018; 2007 -
University of South Florida
2019 -
University of Tennessee Knoxville
2020; 2017; 2014; 2011; 2009; 2006 -
University of Texas at Arlington
2020 -
University of Texas at Austin
2019; 2016 -
University of Texas at El Paso
2019 -
University of the Pacific
2019; 2014 -
University of Virginia
2019; 2015; 2012; 2008; 2005 -
Vanderbilt University
2019; 2015 -
Virginia Commonwealth University
2018; 2014; 2008; 2006 -
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
2019; 2016; 2012; 2009; 2006 -
Wichita State University
2019 -
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
2020; 2016; 2013
Master's
-
Bernard M. Baruch College
2018; 2014; 2009 -
Brooklyn College
2018; 2014; 2009 -
City College of New York
2018; 2014; 2009 -
College of Staten Island
2018; 2014; 2011; 2009 -
CUNY Graduate School of Journalism
2018; 2014 -
CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy
2018 -
CUNY School of Law at Queens College
2018; 2014 -
Hunter College
2018; 2014; 2011; 2009 -
James Madison University
2019; 2015; 2011; 2008 -
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
2018; 2014; 2011; 2009 -
Lehman College
2018; 2014; 2011; 2009 -
Manhattan College
2018 -
North Carolina Central University
2020; 2014; 2011; 2008; 2005 -
Queens College
2018; 2014; 2011; 2009; 2007 -
Radford University
2018; 2015; 2012 -
San José State University
2018 -
University of Houston–Clear Lake
2019; 2015
Baccalaureate
-
Agnes Scott College
2019 -
Amherst College
2019; 2016; 2012; 2006 -
Babson College
2018 -
Centre College
2019 -
College of the Holy Cross
2020; 2014; 2011; 2006 -
Davidson College
2019; 2005 -
Fisk University
2020 -
Harvey Mudd College
2019; 2016 -
Juniata College
2019 -
Kenyon College
2020; 2017; 2014; 2011; 2008; 2005 -
Medgar Evers College
2018; 2014; 2009 -
Mills College
2019 -
Mount Holyoke College
2019; 2014; 2011; 2008 -
Muhlenberg College
2019 -
New York City College of Technology
2018; 2014; 2011; 2008 -
Ohio Wesleyan University
2018 -
Rollins College
2019 -
University of Richmond
2018; 2015; 2012; 2009; 2006 -
Ursinus College
2019 -
Washington and Lee University
2019 -
Wellesley College
2019; 2012; 2007 -
Wofford College
2019 -
York College
2018; 2014; 2009
Community Colleges
-
Amarillo College
2018 -
Borough of Manhattan Community College
2018; 2014 -
Bronx Community College
2018; 2014 -
Hostos Community College
2018; 2014 -
Kingsborough Community College
2018; 2014 -
LaGuardia Community College
2018; 2014 -
Queensborough Community College
2018; 2014 -
Stella and Charles Guttman Community College
2018
Current Faculty Retention and Exit Survey Partners
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Auburn University
2020; 2019; 2018; 2017; 2016 -
Baylor University
2020 -
Emory University
2020; 2019 -
George Mason University
2020; 2019; 2018 -
Iowa State University
2020 -
Rochester Institute of Technology
2020; 2019 -
Tufts University
2020; 2019; 2018 -
University of California–Berkeley
2020 -
University of California–Davis
2020; 2018, 2017; 2016 -
University of California–Irvine
2020; 2018, 2017; 2016 -
University of California–Los Angeles
2020; 2018, 2017; 2016 -
University of California–Merced
2020; 2018, 2017; 2016 -
University of California–Riverside
2020; 2018, 2017; 2016 -
University of California–San Diego
2020; 2018, 2017; 2016 -
University of California–San Francisco
2020 -
University of California–Santa Barbara
2020; 2018, 2017; 2016 -
University of California–Santa Cruz
2020 -
University of Cincinnati
2020; 2019; 2018; 2017; 2016 -
University of Connecticut
2020; 2019 -
University of Denver
2020; 2019 -
University of Nebraska–Kearney
2020; 2019; 2018 -
University of Nebraska–Lincoln
2020; 2019; 2018 -
University of Nebraska–Omaha
2020; 2019; 2018 -
University of South Carolina
2020; 2019; 2018 -
University of Tennessee–Knoxville
2020; 2019; 2018 -
University of Texas–Austin
2020; 2019; 2018; 2017 -
University of Texas–San Antonio
2020; 2019; 2018 -
University of Wisconsin–Madison
2020; 2019 -
Virginia Commonwealth University
2020; 2019; 2018; 2017 -
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
2020; 2019; 2018