COACHE survey tailored to identify faculty's workplace needs

When faculty members take the ongoing COACHE survey, they will be asked several questions tailored specifically to gauging their workplace experiences, job satisfaction and career development at Purdue.

A significant amount of time and effort went into developing a set of custom questions for Purdue, says Peter Hollenbeck, professor of biological sciences and interim associate vice provost for faculty affairs. The goal is to learn information to help the University better address faculty's needs and concerns related to their work life.

The survey will remain open through mid-April. Completion takes about 20 minutes; faculty members received an emailed invitation to complete the survey in January.

"While we were developing the custom questions, I spoke with a lot of faculty members, department heads, deans and core constituencies as well as our COACHE advisory group on campus, and two areas emerged as concerns," Hollenbeck says.

"These stakeholders thought we should specifically ask about the climate for faculty members who are women or underrepresented minorities, and about workplace mistreatment, more commonly known as bullying."

With help from the professionals at the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE) and the ADVANCE-Purdue Center for Faculty Success, eight custom questions about female and underrepresented faculty were included in the survey, as were seven about workplace mistreatment. COACHE allowed for the inclusion of up to 15 custom questions, Hollenbeck says.

In addition to the custom questions, COACHE included a set of core questions that have been studied, modified and scientifically tested for their ability to produce accurate, actionable information from faculty about their work-life, Hollenbeck says.

COACHE is conducting the survey, which is provided through Harvard University's Graduate School of Education. It has conducted such surveys at universities across the country. All survey response and data tabulation will take place at Harvard.

Purdue's COACHE advisory group is made up of about 20 individuals from different units, seniority levels and demographics. This group also will be involved in analyzing the survey's anonymous data once it's made available, Hollenbeck says.

For more information about COACHE, visit http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=coache&pageid=icb.page307142. 

Writer: Amanda Hamon Kunz, 49-61325, ahamon@purdue.edu