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6 Compelling Ways Institutions Are Using Their COACHE Data to Drive Impact

Man Pointing to White BoardFrom closing equity gaps to clarifying the process for promotion to improving governance, COACHE partners are using the data and insights from their Faculty Job Satisfaction Surveys to drive progress at their institutions. 

The COACHE Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey provides both quantitative and qualitative data for leadership, with a focus on various themes that reflect faculty perspectives on their workplace. These themes include nature of work: research, teaching, and service; tenure and promotion; personal and family policies; and institutional governance, among others. 

Below are six examples of how institutions have used their COACHE data to help create positive change: 

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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What HBCU Faculty Members Would Change at Their Institutions

by Shabreena Danz Lopez

At COACHE, we understand that many things – from culture to leadership to funding – can have a direct and potent impact on the ability to recruit, retain, and support faculty.  

“When COACHE talks about faculty experience, it’s vital to recognize the importance of studying different groups and types of institutions for their unique perspectives,” says Todd Benson, executive director and principal investigator at COACHE. That’s one of the reasons why COACHE recently undertook some targeted analysis on data from faculty at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). 

HBCUs play a significant role in producing some of the nation's most talented graduates as well as in allowing Black students to enter a more inclusive higher education community1. HBCUs also have a higher percentage of Black faculty members who often serve as mentors for their students and less senior faculty members (56% compared to 5% Black or Hispanic faculty at primarily white institutions in according to the most often-cited research from 20012).  

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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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Inclusivity Programs Show Strong Return On Investment

PARTNER SPOTLIGHT
Florida International University

Team work

With over one thousand full-time faculty members from around the globe, strengthening inclusivity—with the ability to measure progress—is vital to Florida International University (FIU), which serves more than 56,000 students at its Miami campus.

Leading these efforts is FIU’s Office to Advance Women, Equity, and Diversity (AWED), established in 2016 through a National Science Foundation ADVANCE Grant aimed at institutional transformation. Many of the AWED’s programs—as well as the office’s creation—were informed by data collected through the COACHE Faculty Job Satisfaction Surveys administered in 2017 and 2013.

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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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COACHE Data: Faculty Says Culture is the Top Thing to Address to Improve the Workplace

According to the 2022 COACHE Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey, “culture” tops the list of responses from faculty who were asked to identify the one thing their institution could do to improve the workplace for them.

The five most-commonly cited issues were coded by COACHE researchers from open-ended responses, with 30% of respondents pointing to culture in their answers. The other most-commonly cited areas were leadership (28%), support for work generally (26%), compensation (25%) and facilities and resources for work (23%). More than 12,680 faculty from 31 colleges and universities completed the survey.  

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Research-Practice Partnership Supports Institutional Effectiveness

PARTNER SPOTLIGHT

Dr. Damani White-Lewis and Dr. Nicholas Havey

Data Results Image“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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