PARTNER SPOTLIGHT
Dr. Damani White-Lewis and Dr. Nicholas Havey
“We’re in the business of trying to improve institutional effectiveness,” says Dr. Damani White-Lewis, Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the University of Pennsylvania. “Without research, practice, and partnership, you don’t have the transformative edge.”
An expanding component of COACHE’s work is strengthening the research-practice partnership through the dissemination of data to scholars, such as Dr. White-Lewis, who are part of a growing field of research focusing on the faculty experience and the academic workforce. Most recently, he was the lead author of the paper “Leaving the Institution or Leaving the Academy? Analyzing the Factors that Faculty Weigh in Actual Departure Decisions,” published in Research in Higher Education, co-authored by Dr. KerryAnn O’Meara, Dr. Kiernan Mathews, and Dr. Nicholas Havey.
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The new 
COACHE’s community of practice provides an opportunity to hear more about—and learn from—partner institutions’ experiences and successes.
The results of the Collaborate on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE) Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey provide partners with insight into areas of strength at their institutions, as well as areas for improvement. In addition, through blind peer comparisons, COACHE partners can even see how their faculty satisfaction measures compare to other similar institutions.
One 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.
When we ask our partners “What’s going to get in the way of working with your faculty around COACHE data?”, a frequent response is that faculty are questioning the results. But to ensure that faculty fully engage with data from the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE), it is vital that everyone trusts the results — including any skeptics.
Faculty from Florida International University (FIU), a longtime COACHE partner, recently published “Motivating Bystander Intervention to Reduce Bias in Faculty Interactions” in Advance Journal, which focuses on individual and institutional transformation in social justice.
One of the hallmarks of COACHE’s work is listening. Perhaps the clearest example of COACHE listening to its partners is the development of our COACHE