COACHE FAQs

The Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE) is a collaboration of colleges and universities committed to gathering the peer diagnostic and comparative data academic administrators need to recruit, retain, and develop faculty members, who are critical to the long-term future of their institutions. The core element of COACHE is an electronic survey specially designed for full-time faculty to provide information about their experiences at your institution. The COACHE Survey asks faculty members to assess their experiences regarding promotion and tenure, the nature of their work, policies, and practices, and the general climate, culture, and level of collegiality on their campuses.

The survey has a national scope, and Baylor joins more than 300 colleges and universities from different parts of the country that have participated in it. Baylor is participating primarily because it wants to learn more about how faculty members feel about their jobs so it can improve the quality of their environment. The survey is built to generate a report of actionable data that Baylor can use to improve the quality of the environment for its faculty members.

COACHE also offers a Faculty Retention & Exit Survey for which Baylor has not currently contracted.

The most recent COACHE survey launched the week of February 2024. 

COACHE is a part of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and is a research-practice partnership and network of peer institutions dedicated to improving outcomes in faculty recruitment, development, and retention. Under COACHE, more than 300 colleges, universities, and state systems have strengthened their capacity to identify the drivers of faculty success and implement informed changes.

Baylor's Climate Survey and The Chronicle of Higher Education's Best Places to Work survey are both targeted to faculty and staff. There is also a student component to the Baylor Climate Survey.

The COACHE Survey offers institutions a nationally benchmarked survey that measures faculty satisfaction across a range of areas that impact their ability to flourish. COACHE's Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey is distinctive to the work of faculty which allows it to dive deeper into the issues that matter most to faculty. Support for teaching, research and service, shared governance, and appreciation and recognition for work are just some of the topics covered in the instrument. Survey modules differ slightly between non-tenure-track full-time faculty, tenure-track faculty, and tenured faculty.

If you are a tenure-track faculty member, the COACHE Survey will differ from most others you get because it focuses specifically on tenure-track faculty. An important purpose of COACHE is to learn what tenure-track faculty have to say. COACHE's experiences and studies indicate that neither the concerns nor the opportunities to express them candidly are the same for junior and senior faculty. In a broader survey, the voice of junior faculty may be lost, and institutions will be no better informed to improve the quality of the work environment for the next generation of scholars. COACHE designed the tenure-track survey module through a process that included extensive research, discussions with focus groups, and pilot studies at numerous and varied colleges and universities.

If you are a tenured faculty member, your COACHE Survey is a direct outcome of COACHE's work with pre-tenure faculty. After years of studying the experiences of pre-tenure faculty, we determined that the relationships and perceptions of tenured faculty are a central component of pre-tenured faculty satisfaction. However, the experiences of tenured faculty are quite different from their counterparts. So, rather than simply revising the tenure-track faculty module, COACHE went through the same rigorous process of reviewing the literature, conducting focus groups, administering extensive cognitive interviews, and piloting the instrument. As with the pre-tenure module, the module for tenured faculty is a product of dialogue with faculty about what matters and what institutions can do to improve the quality of their professional life.

Institutions continue to rely on non-tenure-track faculty for a host of responsibilities. As the number of non-tenure-track faculty grows, COACHE hopes to help Universities remain on the leading edge of faculty issues. With this in mind, COACHE has developed a module for non-tenure-track faculty that combines some of the questions asked of tenure-track and tenured faculty with others specific to non-tenure-track faculty.

For the 2020 survey, the institutions that comprised Baylor's peer institutions were Emory University, Georgetown University, St. Louis University, Tulane University, and Vanderbilt University. 

The ability to compare findings across higher education requires that Baylor deploy the complete survey exactly as published - including demographic questions that Baylor would not typically ask and may not align with our institutional stance on many issues.

Universities do have the option to add up to 15 custom questions to the end of the national survey instrument. COACHE provides guidelines and sample questions to help with this process. Baylor has opted in to create custom questions. 

The full list of the most recent COACHE steering committee is available on the 2024 COACHE steering committee page. 

Participation in this survey entails a three-year partnership with COACHE. Over the course of those three years, Baylor will field the survey in year one; share data, evaluate findings and prioritize initiatives in year two; and implement priorities and evaluate progress in year three. The partnership with COACHE also provides for regular consultations with senior academic leaders on how to have meaningful conversations with faculty groups and take action grounded in the data. Baylor has taken the COACHE survey in 2020 and 2024. 

Eligible faculty include full-time, tenure-track, assistant, associate, and full professors; full-time, non-tenure-track, senate (voting) faculty; full-time clinical faculty; and department chairs.

Faculty who are not eligible include faculty in their terminal year after being denied tenure; faculty (including chairs) that have not yet been employed for a full calendar year at the time of the survey; senior administration, e.g., dean, assistant/associate dean, assistant/associate provost.
 

The survey duration varies by respondent, but it typically takes less than 25 minutes to complete. We recognize that your time is very valuable, but investment in this survey by a broad range of faculty is vital in helping Baylor make improvements that create an environment where faculty flourish.

If you do not have time to complete the survey in one sitting, you will not need to start the survey all over again. If you choose to suspend the survey to take a break, if your computer shuts down, or if you lose your Internet connection, you will be able to resume where you left off.

Simply log back in using the link you received in the email you received from COACHE. You will be offered a link on the welcome page that lets you resume where you left off, or you may start your survey over by clicking the "Continue" button at the bottom of the welcome page. If you start over, you'll see that responses to the questions you've already answered have been preserved. To change a prior response, simply select a different answer choice before proceeding to the next screen.

It is very important for each faculty member to reflect his or her own experiences and thoughts in response to the survey questions. This will help Baylor get a true picture of faculty satisfaction broadly and by academic area. As evaluation of areas of improvement identified through the survey begins, faculty will have opportunities to identify improvements and build consensus around recommendations and priorities.

The data from survey responses is collected and housed by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Baylor University will receive no raw survey data. After the close of the survey, all identifying information will be removed from the data for analysis and reporting.

Baylor will provide the names and e-mail addresses of survey-eligible faculty to COACHE. This information is retained by COACHE for the purpose of COACHE research, including reminding respondents to begin or to complete their survey. COACHE will never further disseminate your contact information.

Confidentiality and anonymity are assured in all COACHE analyses and reports. When the survey report is provided to Baylor, only the aggregate data will be shown in the report. No identifiers are matched to reported responses, and no disaggregated data will be presented for any subgroup with fewer than five respondents. For open response portions of the survey, all names used - whether the respondent or others named in the response - will be redacted before results are presented.

Please note that at the end of the survey, COACHE may ask to retain your contact information for further studies. If you allow COACHE to keep your contact information on file, they will strictly protect the privacy and confidentiality of your personal information. The future studies will not be used for individual campus analysis, and no one at Baylor will be notified of your participation in future studies.

Baylor is committed to broadly sharing the survey results with current and future faculty. Survey results will be available in the fall of 2024 via the Office of the Provost's website and through presentations at various faculty meetings. Conversations with faculty groups across campus will also begin in the fall of 2024 as we seek to understand and act upon the findings.

Baylor has pledged to use the data from the survey to improve the workplace for faculty. The survey is only the first step in a multi-year process designed to make data-informed changes to policies and practices affecting faculty. COACHE will provide aggregate reports that will be shared broadly among faculty and academic leadership. From these reports, conversations among departments, schools, faculty interest groups, administrators, and others will seek to evaluate findings and understand areas of concern that emerge. Most importantly, the survey results will help Baylor learn about and prioritize where it should focus attention and resources to make improvements in faculty job satisfaction.

The reports will provide a dashboard of summary data with responses aggregated by academic area, tenure status, and more. The dashboard also includes comparison to national results and Baylor's peer institutions. See an example summary report here: https://coache.gse.harvard.edu/reporting.

Improvements will be pursued where the data leads us and will impact policies and practices across the University. Policy improvements may be needed at the University level. Practices overseen by the schools/colleges may need to be revised. Departmental and unit-level practices may need to be addressed. Active faculty engagement in data presentations and discussions will be vital to understanding, prioritizing, and implementing improvements. 

First and foremost, broad participation in the COACHE survey will provide the University with the clearest picture of areas of success and areas of concern to faculty. Please participate in the survey and encourage others in your school/college and in your circles of influence across the University to participate.

Second, you will have the opportunity to participate in presentations of the survey data beginning in the fall of 2024 and to join conversations about the results in your school/college.

If you would like to volunteer to join the work that emerges from the analysis phase, please contact Drs. Forest Kim and Gaynor Yancey, co-chairs of the COACHE 2024 steering committee. 

As Baylor will do, many peer institutions who have previously utilized the COACHE survey to identify and implement improvements have published their high-level results and implementation plans online. Below are a few examples:

Emory University
Georgetown University
St. Louis University