Findings from UMass Amherst COACHE Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey Now Available

The Office of Faculty Development (OFD) invites the campus community to explore the UMass Amherst summary and thematic reports from the UMass Amherst-COACHE Faculty Job Satisfaction survey. The survey, administered in early 2020 through the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE), assesses issues and trends in work satisfaction among faculty.

Image

The goals of this initiative were to assess and improve institutional supports and structures that are key to faculty recruitment, retention and success. Faculty satisfaction at UMass Amherst is compared to five selected peer institutions. Findings from the survey can inform decision-making and programming in support of faculty success at UMass Amherst. An overview of the survey partnership and timeline can be found on the OFD website. The UMass COACHE Steering Committee and the UMass Amherst Office of Academic Planning and Assessment (OAPA) were integral partners in this initiative.

In addition to the campus-level report’s focus on broad thematic areas from the UMass Amherst-COACHE survey, Vice Provost Michelle Budig and Chancellor’s Leadership Fellow Christiane Healey, in collaboration with the COACHE Steering Committee, authored detailed spotlight reports of findings in each thematic area. In addition, they are preparing special focus reports attending to disparities by gender, race, rank and appointment tracks that will be released in the Fall 2021 semester.

The ten summary reports published this past spring semester for each thematic area of the survey are:

• Nature of Work: Teaching
• Tenure and Promotion
• Nature of Work: Research/Creative Activity
• Mentorship
• Nature of Work: Service
• The Department
• Shared Governance & Institutional Leadership
• Interdisciplinary & Collaboration
• Appreciation & Recognition
• Workplace Policies, Resources, Facilities, Compensation

About the UMass Amherst-COACHE Partnership and Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey

COACHE (Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education) is located at Harvard University and conducts this multi-institutional survey to assess issues and trends in work satisfaction among college and university faculty. The study is conducted by COACHE and carries approval from Harvard’s Institutional Review Board (IRB). Hundreds of higher educational institutions have participated in COACHE since 2007.

COACHE collects data confidentially. Data are analyzed by the COACHE team at Harvard and shared with the Office of Academic Planning and Assessment (OAPA) at UMass Amherst in de-identified form or anonymously. These records are held in OAPA and no one in a supervisory or evaluative capacity will have access to individual responses. The UMass Amherst survey was conducted in February-April of 2020, with 539 faculty completing the survey. All full-time faculty, including tenure-track and non-tenure track faculty on continuing appointments, comprised the study population. The response rate for survey completion was 38%, a higher rate than those of UMass Amherst peer institutions.