COACHE Faculty Satisfaction Survey
As of spring 2024, IU Indianapolis is participating in a national survey of faculty job satisfaction. The survey research is part of a program called the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE), which has been operating from the Harvard Graduate School of Education since 2003. We are excited to begin partnering with COACHE in this research to help us discover what our campus can do better to support our faculty in achieving their professional goals and receiving job satisfaction. Past faculty satisfaction surveys were administered locally by the Office of Institutional Research and Decision Support (IRDS) ending in 2018.
The inaugural campus COACHE survey was sent in February 2024 to full-time faculty from all schools at IU Indianapolis (excluding the School of Medicine, which has its own faculty survey), including ranks for tenure-track, librarian, clinical, research, and lecturer faculty, as well as professors of practice. Faculty were invited to participate by a unique link sent to them directly from COACHE. Administrators at the Associate Dean level and above were not included in the survey since the goal is to assess the job satisfaction of faculty.
February 2024 was a time of major change for the campus, including the transitions of key executive leaders and the realignment of IUPUI into IU Indianapolis. Perhaps for these reasons, our response rate was somewhat lower than that of both our peers and our comparison cohort. However, we did have broad participation across all ranks and demographic groups. Though the response rate is lower than we would prefer, there is every reason to believe that the data we have are representative of IU Indianapolis Faculty.
The COACHE program allows us not only to see data about our faculty’s job satisfaction but also provides a great deal of comparative data to other universities and their findings. For the first survey, we identified five peer institutions: Georgia State University, University of Cincinnati, University of Memphis, University of Texas at Arlington, and Virginia Commonwealth University. COACHE also provides data about a “comparison cohort” of eighty-five other COACHE institutions that are generally similar to IU Indianapolis.
View the School-Level Dashboard here.
All faculty, staff, and students at IU Indianapolis are invited to examine this report. In it, you will find a wealth of data on faculty experiences in the following broad categories:
- Nature of work in research, service, and teaching
- Facilities and work resources
- Personal and family policies
- Health and retirement benefits
- Interdisciplinary work
- Collaboration
- Mentoring
- Tenure policies
- Tenure expectations
- Promotion to full
- Leadership
- Governance
- Departmental collegiality, engagement, and quality
- Appreciation and recognition
