The COACHE Survey: What It Is and Why It Matters at Brooklyn College

About COACHE

The Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE) at the Harvard Graduate School of Education is a research-practice partnership focused on the study of postsecondary faculty experience at different institutions. It was administered CUNY-wide for the first time in spring 2015. Among 250 other colleges, universities, community colleges and systems, CUNY has partnered with COACHE, using their surveys and approaches to examine the faculty experience throughout our system.

Specifically, the survey includes questions related to research-based strategies to effect change in the following areas:

• Nature of Work: Research, Teaching, and Service
• Tenure and Promotion
• Department Engagement, Quality, and Collegiality
• Appreciation and Recognition
• Interdisciplinary Work, Collaboration, and Mentoring
• Resources and Support
• Institutional Leadership
• Shared Governance
• Retention and Negotiation

Survey results for individual campuses are benchmarked against faculty working at other CUNY campuses, at “peer” colleges chosen by the individual institution, and at the national cohort of all institutions participating in the COACHE survey. Results are disaggregated by professorial rank, gender, and race/ethnicity. The results of the 2015 survey were used to make changes at the system level and on individual campuses.

Brooklyn College Response to 2015 COACHE Survey

At Brooklyn College, the provost created five working groups composed of faculty and administrators to dig deeply into the data and recommend action items in the following areas:

• Personnel, Family Policies, Practices
• Facilities, Infrastructure, Research
• Department Life
• Relationship with Administration
• Promotion/Tenure, Teaching, Research, Service

Some of these working groups created additional surveys to gather more data. In response to the recommendations from the working groups and feedback from the surveys, some of the actions taken by the college include:

• Incorporating specific recommendations into the Brooklyn College Strategic Plan;
• Forming a working group in spring 2019 to determine progress toward actions included in Strategic Plan;
• Creating the BC Fix-it app to respond to problems with facilities;
• Providing more reassigned time to the director of the Center for Teaching and Learning for establishing faculty workshops for improving research and teaching and using open pedagogy;
• Requiring departments to establish faculty mentoring programs;
• Developing organizational structure to support faculty research grant activity;
• Creating workshops, such as the Summer Writing Bootcamp, and a more comprehensive chairs orientation program that lasts throughout their first year;
• Training department chairs in positive relations with faculty through Anti-Bullying Training and Progressive Discipline training at the Council for Administrative Policy;
• Developing a plan to retain underrepresented faculty, including establishing the Academic Leadership Council for women and faculty of color.