Virginia Tech's Long-term Partnership With COACHE Enhances Insight For Success
Partner Spotlight: Virginia Tech
Hundreds of colleges and universities have used data gained from COACHE surveys to cultivate a deeper understanding of their faculty’s experience and how to best make improvements, but few institutions have had such a long and impactful partnership with COACHE as Virginia Tech.
With a relationship spanning six cycles of the COACHE Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey and two cycles of the Faculty Retention & Exit Survey over 18 years, Virginia Tech has deeply engaged with its COACHE data to inform strategic planning, prioritization, and the development of unique programs that improve the workplace for faculty and drive Virginia Tech forward.
“Our long partnership with COACHE has given us the benefit of such rich historical, longitudinal data about where we started and where we are at this moment,” says Dr. Rachel Gabriele, Associate Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs at Virginia Tech. Dr. Gabriele says that faculty, administration, and leadership all see the value in the COACHE process and having data available to show progress over time — particularly in complex areas that require ongoing attention.
Growing credibility and faculty participation
The COACHE process clearly resonates with faculty, says Dr. Gabriele, noting that there’s a recognition that the data is academically rigorous and has contributed in measurable ways to the many benefits created and communicated at the university level. She adds that the partnership has also resulted in heightened credibility for COACHE results university-wide, inspiring more data-driven decision making at all levels.
Dr. Gabriele notes that the university has benefited from robust faculty response rates over the years not found with other surveys. She says this is a reflection of faculty trusting the COACHE process, and understanding that it is a highly effective way to have their voices heard. In the most recent cycle of the COACHE survey, Virginia Tech included custom questions focused on institution-specific areas of concern as a strategy to improve response rates and enable tracking of these topics over time — rather than developing a new, separate survey that was less likely to attract the same level of faculty engagement.
Data offers transformative insights and meaningful action
Virginia Tech leadership is highly purposeful in incorporating COACHE survey results into universitywide action plans, says Dr. Gabriele. For example, data showing perennial issues around clarity of tenure expectations led to specific efforts toward improving policies around promotion and tenure, with notable improvements in this area shown in the last survey cycle.
Informed by COACHE data, a greater focus has also been put on work/life balance policies in recent years, resulting in steady improvement in faculty satisfaction with programs, including a novel dependent deans and department heads to better engage with the data through a dashboard for departments and colleges to be able to compare their data over the last three cycles. At the department level, data is often being parsed year by year, with department chairs being able to identify specific actions that led to results. “How people are using the data — outside of our office — is fascinating, surprising, inspiring. Faculty are really trying to find the answers in this data. Watching them make sense of this data and what it is doing in their department is much more noticeable than what we are seeing at the university level, and that’s amazing to experience,” says Dr. Gabriele. Deep partnership fosters continuous improvement Dr. Rachel Gabriele care travel grant to address childcare concerns in the school’s rural location. The program is an outcome of digging into survey comments from faculty as well as continued conversations, which have led to the program being broadened to encompass care giving.
“In addition to the valuable benefit it provides [to faculty], the signal it sends about the support the university is trying to give — trying to remove barriers so our faculty go and be awesome — is really important,” says Dr. Gabriele.
With the data at the university level proving so valuable, Virginia Tech provides opportunities for deans and department heads to better engage with the data through a dashboard for departments and colleges to be able to compare their data over the last three cycles. At the department level, data is often being parsed year by year, with department chairs being able to identify specific actions that led to results.
“How people are using the data — outside of our office — is fascinating, surprising, inspiring. Faculty are really trying to find the answers in this data. Watching them make sense of this data and what it is doing in their department is much more noticeable than what we are seeing at the university level, and that’s amazing to experience,” says Dr. Gabriele.
Deep partnership fosters continuous improvement
Virginia Tech was an early partner of COACHE, and continues to develop and apply best practices — in both administering the survey and acting on the results. Over its many years of partnership with COACHE, Virginia Tech has benefited from and contributed to the COACHE community of practice, through COACHE’s strategy workshops and other one-on-one conversations with institutional peers. Virginia Tech was also among the first to participate in the COACHE Faculty Retention and Exit Survey, seeking out additional information to add to its databased insights that help leaders to continue to improve the faculty experience.
Dr. Gabriele is already looking toward the future with COACHE, commenting on the close partnership that exists beyond the surveys themselves. “COACHE knows Virginia Tech and what our interests are. When new opportunities are popping up or there are new ways of looking at something that would benefit us, they know when to reach out to us.”
This story appeared in COACHE’s recently released COACHE 20th Anniversary Impact Report: Looking Back – Moving Forward. Read the full report here.