COACHE Benchmarks: Strengths and Concerns

Understanding the COACHE Benchmarks

The following five pages offer a view of your faculty from 10,000 feet. Each survey theme is summarized by a “Benchmark,” the mean of several five-point Likert-scale survey questions that share a common theme. A Benchmark score provides a general sense of how faculty feel about a particular aspect of their work/life at your institution; your CAO Report delivers results for Benchmarks and for specific survey items.

In this preview, we compare your Benchmark scores, shown as diamonds, to the scores of other COACHE partners, represented as horizontal lines. Blue lines represent the top 30 percent of institutional means, red lines represent the bottom 30 percent, and grey lines represent institutions in the middle 40 percent. The circles locate the five institutions your team selected as most nearly competing with yours (or resembling yours) in the market for faculty. The black line represents your prior results from 2020.


Guide for Benchmarks-at-Glance view

Your Strengths and Concerns

As shorthand, COACHE defines as an "area of strength" any Benchmark where your institution scores first or second among your selected comparison group and in the top 30 percent (the blue section) of the cohort. Conversely, an "area of concern" is where your faculty rating of a Benchmark falls fifth or sixth among your peers and in the bottom 30 percent (the red section) of the cohort. The survey themes at the right met these criteria for Virginia Tech.

Note that between-group differences could alter your conclusions about these aspects of academic life on your campus—and suggest tailored approaches to improving them. Keep this in mind as you consider, after the overall results, the subsequent charts for pre-tenure faculty, for associate professors, for women, and for faculty of color. Look to your CAO Report for other subgroups and more detailed displays.

Areas of strength (all faculty combined)

  • Health and Retirement Benefits

Areas of concern (all faculty combined)

  • Departmental Collegiality
  • Departmental Engagement
  • Leadership: Departmental
 
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