Higher Education Leadership

Where the Faculty Affairs Things Are: Conferences and Convenings in 2024 

Conference ImageTaking part in professional development events is one of the best ways to build your network with other colleagues in community affairs, as well as your own capacity for success. In addition to leaning in to COACHE’s events and opportunities, there is a wide range of valuable conferences and workshops for those who engage with and support faculty. You’ll often find members of the COACHE team attending or presenting, alongside other respected colleagues in the field.  

To help you plan ahead for 2024, below you’ll find a list of opportunities in the learning landscape — along with a direct link to annual meeting or annual conference information where available. Many organizations also hold workshops and seminars throughout the year, so make sure to take a look at the events section of each. (The descriptions of the organizations and events were provided by the organizations’ websites.) 

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Partner Perspectives: Creating Transformative Spaces to Build Our Future Faculty

Stage

A long-respected leader in the efforts to build diverse faculty at universities, Susan Carlson provides a look back on how she achieved success borrowing from a key feature in theatrical comedy — the “middle space.” Using the idea of middle space allowed for the testing of new roles, ideas, and relationships among her colleagues and faculty. 

She reveals that the middle space, as well as her research into comedy as an early-career professor, played a pivotal role in her leadership work. 

Carlson’s Creating Transformative Spaces to Build Our Future Faculty is the first in a series of pieces for COACHE’s Partner Perspectives guest column, in which leaders driving progress in higher education share their experience and perspectives.
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Advancing Higher Education Research

PARTNER SPOTLIGHT
Dr. Amal Kumar


COACHE PresentationWhile faculty satisfaction is closely tied to student success, the faculty experience continues to be understudied, leaving institutions with fewer answers or best practices to address the unique challenges facing faculty in the workplace.
 

To increase the knowledge and inquiry in this area of study, COACHE is committed to providing broad access to data for scholars as they begin their early research paths in higher education.

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Why Do Faculty Leave or Stay?: COACHE Faculty Retention and Exit Survey Highlights Top Factors

Salary, quality of colleagues, and the reputation of the department or institution are the top reasons given by faculty to either leave or stay in their position in higher education. 

The findings are according to results from the 2021-2022 COACHE Faculty Retention and Exit Survey — the only multi-institutional survey of faculty retention and departure in US higher education.  

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Focus on Progress Leads to Faculty Governance Reform

PARTNER SPOTLIGHT
Lafayette College

When administrative and faculty leadership at Lafayette College reviewed the results of their 2020 COACHE Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey, they saw a clear desire from faculty to engage more fully in critical issues, such as diversity, equity, and inclusion. However, faculty at the small liberal arts college in Easton, Penn. were simultaneously facing a dramatically increased workload and other challenges as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. ...

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What Does Baseball Have to Do with COACHE Surveys? Rethinking Your COACHE Teams by Engaging Pinch Hitters

By Todd Benson

baseball bat and gloveOne of the first action items for partners who are undertaking surveys with the Collaborate on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE) is to form a COACHE team. Administering any campus-wide, data intensive project necessitates a diversity of skills, talents, and access that no single person at an institution can embody. Despite some people’s desires that the contrary is true, it’s just not realistic to expect a single person to manage a project of this scale.

Which brings me to the idea of a pinch hitter.

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Examining Faculty Departure and Retention at Small Liberal Arts Colleges

by Sara Polsky

woman carrying box out of officeThe departure of a single faculty member can cause a significant ripple in the pond of a liberal arts college, as one person’s departure has the potential to impact the community when it comes to teaching, institutional governance, and morale to a degree not seen at larger institutions. Most research up until this point, however, has focused on departures at larger institutions.... Read more about Examining Faculty Departure and Retention at Small Liberal Arts Colleges

Navigating Change as a Provost or Dean: In Conversation with Two-time College President Barry Mills

by Sara Polsky
 
Seminar on Leadership of the Faculty participant speakingThe Seminar on Leadership of the Faculty—a COACHE program run in partnership with the Harvard Institutes on Higher Education—offers deans and provosts from institutions across the world an opportunity to learn from experts and each other about how to lead institutions creatively through periods of change. At one seminar, Barry Mills, former president of Bowdoin College, former interim chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Boston, and a consultant to a variety of institutions, joined attendees to discuss navigating the competing priorities of campus leadership as a dean or provost.... Read more about Navigating Change as a Provost or Dean: In Conversation with Two-time College President Barry Mills

The Post-Virus Professoriate: Retrenched, or Reinvented?

by Kiernan Mathews

Harvard University gates with ivyThe Chronicle Review recently published a forum on the future of the academic work force. I found it to be a grim look at trends in the professoriate. Even the thought leaders I have always counted on for optimism had only some scraps of it to share. Although urgent priorities at COACHE kept me from meeting the editor’s deadline, I decided to share here my hope for tomorrow’s faculty—in the hands of today’s faculty.

Childcare for Faculty: The Babar in the Room

by Kiernan Mathews

working parents with infantI was recently contacted by Colleen Flaherty at Inside Higher Ed about plans for meeting the childcare needs of faculty now and in the coming months. After casting around for an answer, I’ve found very little to share with her--and that absence of a plan might end up being the story.  

With this post, I wanted to share a report of my (thin) findings, float a local solution—just a sketch of a solution, really—and invite reactions, hare-brained schemes or better ideas from you academic leaders who are in the thick of it.... Read more about Childcare for Faculty: The Babar in the Room

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