COACHE Survey

In the spring of 2007, Virginia Tech participated in the COACHE survey of pre-tenure faculty. The COACHE survey asks faculty to assess their experiences regarding promotion and tenure, the nature of their work, policies and practices, and the general climate, culture and level of collegiality on their campuses. Responses from Virginia Tech faculty are compared with those of faculty at five selected peer institutions and the entire population of research university respondents.

The COACHE project summarizes national data in a variety of reports, identifying institutions where pre-tenure faculty are particularly happy and highlighting sometimes suprising results, such as the finding that faculty at public universities are more satisfied with their jobs than faculty at private colleges.

Highlights of Virginia Tech's responses have been shared with new department heads and university leaders and promotion and tenure committee chairs. On October 29, 2007, the provost convened a small group of Virginia Tech pretenure faculty to discuss some of the issues identified by the COACHE survey. Notes from that meeting are here.

On January 8, 2008, Cathy Trower, co-director of the COACHE project, presented Virginia Tech's responses compared with those of our peer institutions as part of the annual Advancing Diversity at Virginia Tech workshop. Following the workshop, Trower presented additional highlights to a group of about 50 pretenure faculty discussed of how to improve the quality of work life on the morning of January 9, 2008. A summary of that discussion is here.