Faculty are employed by institutions, but they spend most of their time in departments, where culture has perhaps the greatest influence on faculty satisfaction and morale. We have highlighted three broad areas in which faculty judge the departments in which they work: engagement, quality, and collegiality.

Collegiality

While many factors comprise faculty members' opinions about departmental collegiality, COACHE has discovered that faculty are especially cognizant of their sense of "fit" among their colleagues, their personal interactions with colleagues, whether their colleagues "pitch in" when needed, and colleague support for work/life balance. There is no substitute for a collegial department when it comes to faculty satisfaction, and campus leaders--both faculty and administrators-can create opportunities for more and better informal engagement.

Engagement

It is increasingly common to talk about student engagement, but less so faculty engagement. Yet, it is difficult to imagine an engaged student population without an engaged faculty. COACHE and the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (FSSE) complement one another in that FSSE considers the faculty--student connection, while COACHE measures faculty engagement with one another--by their professional interactions and their departmental discussions about undergraduate and graduate learning, pedagogy, the use of technology, and research methodologies.

Quality

Departmental quality is a function of the intellectual vitality of faculty, the scholarship that is produced, the effectiveness of teaching, how well the department recruits and retains excellent faculty, and whether and how poor faculty performance is handled.

Related survey items

In this theme, related items cover the roles of non-tenure-track and part-time faculty in the department.