Frequently Asked Questions

The Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE) is a national effort coordinated through the Harvard Graduate School of Education to gather data and feedback on areas of institutional strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. In other words, COACHE is a survey to understand faculty satisfaction.

Data is compared to peer cohorts. The COACHE team performs the statistical analysis and provides a report and aggregate data to the LSU team.

One of the highest priorities of the provost is to foster a workplace where faculty feel supported and valued for their contributions to the university through their research efforts and the success of our students. The goal of this survey is to obtain data on the satisfaction of full-time academic tenured, tenure-track, and non-tenured track faculty, i.e., professors, associate professors, assistant professors, and full-time academic professionals and lecturers. Participation is voluntary but encouraged. 

The survey provides us with a unique opportunity to hear directly from faculty and importantly, center faculty voices as we develop a plan for the future. While we know there are endless demands on faculty time and it seems as if there are already too many surveys, this is the first major faculty satisfaction survey of its kind conducted on this campus. Led by an independent research team at Harvard Graduate School of Education, the COACHE survey instrument gives us benchmarking capabilities, lending important context to the data.Your responses will provide evidence of things that we do well and things that we need to do  better. Ultimately, your participation will help guide priority-setting and planning for the future. (Survey closed April 12)

We are fully committed to protecting the privacy of all participants. An independent team of researchers at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education leads the COACHE survey and is responsible for instrument development, implementation, and importantly, data collection.

During the recruitment phase of the survey, your name and email addresses are retained by COACHE (not CORE Committee team members at LSU) solely for the sake of COACHE research. When COACHE submits the survey report to LSU, only the deidentified data is shown in the report. This means, no identifiers are matched to reported response, and at no time will any personnel on LSU’s campus have access to any data containing identifying information. Moreover,  no disaggregated data will be presented for any subgroup with fewer than five respondents within a demographic group within a unit. Finally, as part of our memorandum of understanding with COACHE, no administrators in Academic Affairs or HRM will have access to unit-level data. COACHE also ensures participant anonymity in all output, including data released and correspondent reports. This is all meant to protect the identity of respondents.

In a process approved by Harvard and LSU’s institutional review board, COACHE will provide our campus with their summary analysis, as well as the confidential unit-record database, stripped of names and e-mail addresses. The unit-record data (without your name or email address) will be sent to a representative in our office of Institutional Research, who has signed a statement of confidentiality legally guaranteeing that the unit-record data received by him/her will not be shared with any individuals who are in a position to make or influence personnel decisions about individual subjects, and that only aggregate data, with no cells smaller than five respondents, will be shared with broader audiences at their institution. 

This survey is IRB-reviewed and approved by both Harvard University and LSU. Visit https://coache.gse.harvard.edu/faq for more information related to privacy concerns.

Individual responses to data will not be provided. However, reports on the COACHE Faculty Satisfaction Survey will be provided to the campus community. Please check this page for timeline, updates, and more details in the coming months. 

Concerned you haven't received the email from COACHE? Faculty should check their Inbox and Junk Folder for a message with subject line, "Help LSU assess the academic workplace.” (Survey closed April 12)
 
If you have not received the link, please request a new one at any time by contacting coachefaculty@abtassoc.com.
 
If you are having difficulty with this process, please contact coache@lsu.edu.

The survey will close on April 12, 2021.